|
|
NDLTD Document Archive >
International Conferences, Workshops and Symposia >
ETD 2004 >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2340/723
|
|
| Title: | DiTeD - Digital Thesis and Dissertations in Portugal |
| Authors: | José Borbinha
Jorge Machado
Luisa Castanheira
Maria Margarida Lopes
Marta Motta |
| Creation Date: | 3-Jun-2004 |
| Issue Date: | 21-Jan-2008 |
| Publisher: | NDLTD |
| Place: | Lexington, Kentucky, USA |
| Abstract: | The National Library of Portugal (BN - Biblioteca Nacional) is a deposit library, responsible by the legal deposit in the country. BN is also responsible by the National Bibliography and by PORBASE, the national union catalogue (in UNIMARC). PORBASE registers actually nearly 1.5 million bibliographic descriptions and three million items, from 150 libraries all over the country. At its own, BN holds a collection estimated in three million items, of which half are catalogued in PORBASE (which means that nearly 50% of the records in the database are from BN). Thesis and dissertations have been covered by the legal deposit law in Portugal for twenty years, and therefore they must be deposited at BN, registered in PORBASE, and reported in the National Bibliography as grey literature. In this moment PORBASE reports nearly twenty seven thousands records of thesis (in fact the number reported by the catalogue in the moment of writing of this document is 38.399, but we learned already that an important number of those records are technical reports, lectures and other academic materials wrongly catalogued as thesis). BN started addressing the problem of Electronic Thesis and Dissertations in 1999, with a pilot project that developed an assets management system in PERL, for the LINUX operating system, and based on the DIENST technology. This system could perform as a local digital library, with functions for submission, verification, search and retrieve (with access control). The system was loaded with all the bibliographic records of the paper-based thesis registered in PORBASE (the UNIMARC records were easily transformed for the format required by the system), of which one hundred were digitized and their files were associated to the records. In a first moment they were also submitted twenty new digital born theses. This system was used to promote the idea among the university libraries in the country, and a few were interested to install and test it too. Unfortunately, the period of 2001 and 2002 was not an easy financial period for the universities neither for BN, so the project had to be suspended due to the lack of specific support. The project re-started in 2003, now with the development of new software package for assets management, developed in JAVA and running both in LINUX and WINDOWS. Besides the support for the same functions of the previous system, this system offers new powerful functions, such as authority control (subjects and authors -the system is intended to be used to hold also papers and reports), servers for OAI-PMH and Z39.50, and a functional interface to import and export records in UNIMARC (possible to be extended to any other bibliographic format). The project develop now in 2004 starting with the installation of a fully functional system at BN, interoperable with PORBASE, and also interoperable with a second system installed in the most important engineering school in the country, IST - Instituto Superior Técnico. This will be used to promote the concept, and motivate other universities to follow a similar process (several candidates demonstrated already their interest). This cooperation will be open to the 14 public and 10 private universities existing in Portugal, as also to the several hundreds of polytechnic schools and similar (relevant for master thesis). The purpose it to bring to the network as many schools as possible, using the DiTeD assets management system, or others (meanwhile several universities have been developing their own solutions too, or using other existing ones, such as DSpace). In parallel the project will promote two other actions of work, one with the purpose to promote projects for the retrospective digitization of printed thesis, and another one for the normalization of the descriptions (using the Portuguese Cataloguing Rules and the UNIMARC format as references). Finally, it will be given also a special attention to the international cooperation, not only with NDLTD, but also in bilateral actions with other Portuguese speaking countries (especially for the building of virtual thematic collections and dissemination). This paper presents more details of this project, including: * an analysis of the actual bibliographic descriptions of thesis in dissertation in PORBASE (subjects and universities) * a description of the actual practices and experiences with ETDs in the most important universities in the country * A description of a cooperating program where the National Library will play the role of a centralizing entity, where, taking advantage of the critical mass, specific investments and actions can be performed with relevant savings for all (such as the interfaces for the international cooperation). * A technical description of the DiTeD system and of its model of interoperation with PORBASE and the other local systems (DiTeD or others), as also a description of how it can be valuable for the creation of this national network for digital thesis and dissertations. |
| Citation: | In Proceedings of Seventh International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| URI: | http://www.uky.edu/ETD/ETD2004/borbinha/etd2004.ppt
http://hdl.handle.net/2340/723 |
| Appears in Collections: | ETD 2004
|
Files in This Item:
| File |
Size | Format |
|---|
| etd2004.ppt | 629Kb | Microsoft Powerpoint | View/Open |
|
All items in the NDLTD Document Archive are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
|
