Minutes 2.27.04

CDC Digital Collections TF

Our guests today were from the Medical Library: Charlie Greenburg, Daniel Dollar and Rick Zweis.

Medical Library Theses:

The Medical School requires medical students to complete a thesis. These are unique and remain in the medical school library. In addition to the medical school, there are also these from EPH and Nursing. They are not sent to the Graduate School and are not included in the material sent to UMI. This material is shallowly cataloged and kept in a locked cage in the stacks, making access difficult.

Charlie began this project when developing a tercentennial exhibit. He realized the theses were hard to get to and wanted to get them on the web.

The project that first emerged from this was the Thesisweb project (http://thesis.med.yale.edu/). ORBIS records for medical student theses from 1950 to the present are included in THESISweb. Abstracts for medical student theses are available for the years 1984 to 2001. Abstracts for nursing student theses are available for the years 1990 to 2001. Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH) masters thesis abstracts are also included for 1995-2001. Charlie didn’t know the total number of theses in the collection.

This project has been well accepted. Abstracts are getting online with student help, and there is a positive outcome in the better relationship that has been built with the Office of Student Research at the Medical School.

Charlie uses a “turnkey” software to create this database (Reference Web Poster). It is served from a smallish computer, formerly his own workstation.

In 2000, Charlie went to ETD2000, a conference on Electronic Theses and Dissertations. After that experience, he proposed mounting full texts of theses on the web. The Office of Student Research agreed.

The material is mounted on the web on a voluntary basis. Students fill out an application form to make the electronic version available. It is submitted as a Word document and formatted for the system. The General Counsel’s office approved the form. In Spring of 2002, 8 students applied and another small number applied last spring. The submission software is the ETD software from Virginia Tech, and has a community of universities who are using it.

The reason growth is slow may have to do with philosophical differences between the library and the Medical School on the importance of the thesis. The Medical School sees the thesis as an intellectual exercise while the Library sees it as an important and unique resource.

They are also going to start scanning some documents to put into the system. YUL is also part of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations which could lead to more interest and support here.

Charlie’s interest lies in the submission and how to get more theses submitted. He is also interested in making sure all abstracts are in Orbis…people on the TF suggested possible solutions for him. The system will grow, possibly in collaboration with the Digital Library project Medical is also working on.

DIGITAL Library project (http://www.med.yale.edu/library/intranet/dl/)

In 2002, the Medical Library began strategic planning which was cut short due to library strategic planning. One outcome, however, was a working group on digital resources. This subgroup researched different digital library issues and solutions around campus and formulated ideas on how to proceed.

The Medical group first thought about what they wanted to digitize: text, pictures, and also integrating material from other projects as well.

They decided to start a pilot with Greenstone Digital Library (http://www.greenstone.org) because it was open source, flexible, and had a significant user community for development. Daniel noted that this does not close off using the Beinecke DL in the future, or Luna. But their systems subgroup felt Greenstone best fit their content and systems needs at this time. This is not documented because their group was quite adhoc. Sandy noted her Mellon project has that kind of documentation and it is very helpful for others.

They are now in the pilot stage where they are working on three different things at once:

-system installation and development

-scanning and workflow

-metadata

they have a draft element set and are using a software called DC-dot, which is based on Dublin Core. They are customizing it to their needs and will have an Access front end for editing the metadata.

They also expect that their system will be flexible and as long as they have good data and images, they can repurpose their data to be put in other systems.

Rick is interested in how this project will fit into their online exhibit goals as well.

Their goal is to get a pilot database online by June 1. There is a bet in the works between Katie and Matt Wilcox over whether it will happen.