The purpose of this study was to identify the digital curation practices in institutional repositories (IRs) in South India.,A voluntary survey was conducted among the IR managers of 23 South Indian IRs, and the response rate was 87%.,This study found that the active participation of South Indian IRs was only seen in a few digital curation activities. However, of the 33 digital curation activities analyzed, the active participation of repositories was only seen in ten digital curation activities. The performance of preservation activities was extremely low, and disagreements were recorded by the survey participants toward several digital curation activities. The most disagreed digital curation activities were emulation and cease data curation. All the participants had assigned metadata and allowed file downloads in their repositories. Raman Research Institute had provided a good number of digital curation services in their IR.,This is an in-depth study investigating the digital curation practice currently underway in South Indian IRs, and the researcher could not find similar studies in this niche.

Digital curation practices in institutional repositories in South India: a study

Making scholarly information visible to web search engines is an ongoing challenge, and undergraduate research is no exception. Using a sample of award-winning undergraduate history papers and journals, the authors searched Google, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and the authors' institutional repository to gauge the difficulty of locating these works. Given that many of these works were not easily found, results suggest that libraries and their institutions could be doing more to increase the discoverability of undergraduate research. Based on the success stories observed in this study, we offer strategies to libraries and librarians for increasing the visibility of undergraduate student research.

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The Discoverability of Award-Winning Undergraduate Research in History: Implications for Academic Libraries

Purpose




This study aims to identify and analyse the challenges faced in the bibliographic control of theses and dissertations in Kenya.




Design/methodology/approach




The study used descriptive survey method and targeted four universities in Kenya and two initiatives whose objective is compilation of a database of theses and dissertations. The total number of respondents was 17 out of a target of 21.




Findings




The study found delays in the libraries getting their designated copies; ineffective coordination between the different university departments in the deposition process; deposition of soft copies is still a grey area in the universities surveyed; libraries have embedded records of theses and dissertations in their Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs); delays in capturing theses and dissertations in the libraries’ OPACs; and lack of consistency and uniformity in the bibliographic records.




Research limitations/implications




Many universities have joined the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) movement and now require graduating students to deposit an electronic copy of their research thesis or dissertation. Currently, universities in Kenya either already have institutional repositories (IRs) or they are at an advanced stage of implementation. There is need for further research on the status adoption of ETDs; the status of IRs; treatment of theses and dissertations (TDs) in Kenya; challenges and prospects of subject analysis of TDs; cost-effective metadata creation for TDs; issues in metadata creation and standardization for TDs; and automated metadata creation.




Practical implications




Without a comprehensive source of all TDs submitted in universities in Kenya, TDs will be inaccessible and therefore underutilised. There will also be the risk of duplication of research and plagiarism because it will be difficult to ascertain the authenticity and integrity of TDs submitted in the various universities.




Originality/value




This is the only research in Kenya that has analysed the status of bibliographic control of theses and dissertations. The study will enable university administrators to put in place appropriate policies for improved bibliographic control of theses and dissertations. The study may be used to inform policy frameworks as universities begin to build their institutional repositories. The findings shed light on the treatment of TDs and challenges of cataloguing them.

Bibliographic control of theses and dissertations in Kenya

This paper provides a case study on remediating electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) metadata at the University of Houston Libraries. The authors provide an overview of the team’s efforts to revise existing ETD metadata in its institutional repository as part of their commitment to aligning ETD records with the Texas Digital Library Descriptive Metadata Guidelines for Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Version 2.0 (TDL guidelines, version 2). The paper reviews the existing literature on metadata quality and ETD metadata practices, noting how their case study adds one of the first documented cases of ETD metadata remediation. The metadata upgrade process is described, with close attention to the tools and workflows developed to complete the remediation. The authors conclude the paper with a discussion of lessons learned, the project’s limitations, future plans, and the emerging needs of metadata remediation work.

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A Case Study of ETD Metadata Remediation at the University of Houston Libraries

This article discovers the collection diversity of electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) repositories based on key parameters such as regional distribution, subject classification, language diversity, etc. and identifies the critical management issues of the ETD repositories related to collection management, software management, content management and metadata policies. The ETD repositories were identified in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). The required data were manually collected from the OpenDOAR and websites of repositories to achieve the prescribed objectives of the study. The data were later tabulated, analysed and interpreted using simple arithmetic techniques. The study was limited to the ETD repositories available in the OpenDOAR, and findings cannot be generalized across repositories and directories. It provides insights about ETD repositories worldwide, highlights their critical management issues and suggests mechanisms for their sustainable growth and development. This article is purely based on research and its findings are valid for scholars, faculty members, institutions – as well as administrators and managers of the ETD repositories.

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Global electronic thesis and dissertation repositories – collection diversity and management issues

This study explains the results of an online survey of academic institutional repositories in the United States conducted in an effort to answer the following questions: (a) What metadata do institutional repositories use to describe and provide access to their theses and dissertations? (b) What quality control is being done for this metadata, and are quality control and controlled vocabulary even important in a digital repository? The survey found a general consensus among institutions on using the title, abstract, type, author, and subject fields. While there was disagreement on the importance of controlled vocabulary, respondents agreed quality control was important.

Nicole Sump-crethar

Papers

Metadata for Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Survey of Institutional Repositories