ETD 2008 Road Trip: Fettercairn Distillery

ETD 2008 Road Trip: Crathes Castle and Gardens

Closing Session: Future Plans

Besides the the promotion for ETD 2009 in Pittsburgh, the remaining conference delegates were taking theorugh successive ballots to assist in the determination of themes, tracks, and places for future ETD meetings.

Innovation Track: the ABES STAR system

Marianne Giloux and Isabelle Mauger Perez from the Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur (ABES), France presented the plan for the implementation of STAR, which includes:

• saving and recording the Theses
• gathering and extracting metadata used for description, indexation, long term preservation and dissemination
• transfering the theses to a national system of preservation
• allocating a permanent identifier ( URL)

Data and metadata are ingested in STAR either on-line, through Web forms, or by importation of normalized files extracted from various locals systems, or with a mixed method.

Innovation Track: Open Electronic Library of Kyrgyzstan

Sania Battalova, from the American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyz Republic and President of Library and Information Consortium of Kyrgyzstan, reportedabout the Open Digital Libraries of Papers of Kyrgyzstan scientists, implementing a cooperative across 12 libraries in Kyrgyzstan. The Library community implementing new technologies and projects, and building team work for sustainability.

The Innovation Track: Peru

Libio Huaroto from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Library System in Lima, Peru, has already provides an earlier blog update on the developments of his ETD efforts in Peru. At ETD2008, he spoke about the implementation of the Digital Thesis Peruvian Network. Libio also set up a slideshare site to share presentations.

Friday: the UK EthOS Project!

The UK’s Electronic Thesis On-line Service (EThOS) team presented a live demonstration and discussion of the next-generation EthOS system and the harvesting technologies they will use for thesis metadata held in the servers and on the shelves of up to 120 UK university libraries to be accessed from a single point of contact. The EThOS partners highlighted why this service is important to UK research and how it benefits UK Higher Education and those who want access to a primary research resource.

ETD Leadership Award: Susan Copeland

John Hagan presented ETD 2008 co-chair Dr. Susan Copeland with the 2008 ETD Leadership Award. Dr. Copeland is largely responsible for ETD developments in the United Kingdom and she has influenced activities in this area in Europe. She has also worked extensively on international projects with the NDLTD and the American Library Association.

ETD Student Awards

The NDLTD ETD Awards for 2008 were already announced, yet warmly celebrated with the student thesis authors. One of the highlights was the presentation by Nursing thesis author Colin Macduff, who as part of his presentation re-enacted the "non-digital birth" of the print thesis, in order to make the point that his digital thesis deserved better neonatal care.

Thursday Evening Conference Dinner

The ETD 2008 conference delegates traveled by charter bus to the Ardoe House Hotel for a wonderful traditional Scottish formal dinner, followed by special entertainment: A Celtic musician trio performing Scottish country dance standards. They also insisted on audience participation, which resulted in the inevitable collision of cultures when the direction "inside foot, then outside foot" cannot be translated into left or right!

Plenary Session: Open Sesame!

John Hagan provided an overview of the longitudinal evidence he has gathered over the decade-long e-volution of the West Virginia U. ETD Repository program and it morphed into the institutional repository framework. The successful WVU program (yes, the graphic at left demonstrates the formula for that famous 146,000% figure you hear rumored at ETD meetings) still faces challenges to persuade faculty in the humanities that open access of creative theses is a winning proposition for students.

Poster Session!

Dr. Shalini Urs from the U. of Mysore in India presented a poster on an experiement to create an ontology based retrieval system for ETDs in the Vidyanidhi Digital Library.

Poster Session!

Antanas Streimikis from the Kaunas U. of Technology in Lithuania presented a poster session describing the Lithuanian eLABa ETD collection, its regulations, documentation, and software applications.

Poster Session!

Jane Aucock from the U. of St. Andrews and the Scottish Digital Libraries Consortium explains how her university developed and implemented their ETD deposit program.

Thursday Plenary I- The SPECTRa-T Project

Peter Morgan from Cambridge University presented the initial results of the SPECTRa-T project, using a text mining tool for extracting chemical terminology and object identification from both PDF and non-PDF files. Peter stressed that this project met its goal of establishing a proof of concept approach, prior to the actual establishment of a production model.

Thursday Keynote: Herbert Van de Sompel

Dr. Herbert Van de Sompel, from the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, presented a fascinating and engaging introduction to two projects he is currently engaged in as a member of the Digital Library Research and Prototying Team at his institution: OAI-ORE, which focuses on digital object re-use and exchange, and MESUR, a demonstration project to establish a new scholarly metric based on usage, not publication. At left is Dr. Van de Sompel's explanation of aggregated object clusters and the need to address object grouping and similarity, beyond individual documents or web pages.

Libio arrives from Peru!

Libio Huaroto, delegate from the La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Library System, has arrived at ETD2008 on Thursday morning. Welcome, Libio!

Entertainment at the Beach Ballroom

Entertainment at the Beach Ballroom Civic Reception was provided by the City of Roses Chorus of Sweet Adelines, a female chorus which performs in shows in Aberdeen and throughout the country.

City of Aberdeen Welcomes ETD 2008

The Aberdeen Beach Ballroom was the site of the Aberdeen Civic Reception to welcome the delegates to ETD 2008. The delegates queued up up outside and enjoyed the pleasant weather and views of the sea.

Ana Pavani's Plenary Session focused on making ETDs accessible to the visually impaired and blind. She drew on the work of Cátedra UNESCO de Leitura PUC-Rio a UNESCO project devoted to reading activites that suggested that the ETD global library could be enhanced to be used by those with other than normal vision. Ana began her talk by giving credit to James Clark Maxwell(1831-1879), the Scottish scientist and inspiration for their institutional repository system.

ETD 2009 is coming!

Tim Dellyannides, Information Systems leader at the U. of Pittburgh Library System, and John Hagan from the U. of West Virginia Libraries, were in the poster area to promote ETD 2009, co-sponsored by their library systems. The 2009 conference will be held June 10 – 13 at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.

ETD 2009 will provide a forum to:

• Share the secrets of successful ETD, institutional repositories and open access programs.
• Learn about new developments related to ETD authoring, archiving and dissemination.
• Meet and discuss ETD challenges and issues with peer participants in your region.
• Build skills that will facilitate ETD implementation at your university.
• Review issues that influence the success of your ETD program.
• Share experiences and research with the ETD community.

Poster Session!

Dr Raj Kumar is the Sr Library & Information Officer at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigar. His poster presented the challenges he faces with promoting ETDs and making health sciences scholarship available in a global context.

Poster Session!

The SHERPA team of Sophia Jones and Bill Hubbard presented poster sessions on the Intute Repository Search and the constellation of SHERPA Services available to repository managers, librarians, publishers, and research funders.

Keynote Address: Dr. Paul Ayris

The first Keynote Address, Digital Strategy: Implications for E-Theses, was presented by Dr. Paul Ayris, the Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer. Among the topics presented was the UCL 5-year stratic plan 2005-2010, the UCL Superbook Project, and his desire to move the digital library planning process toward a model of placing "Charlie", the library user, at the center of the digital library program. Can you find Charlie in the Dr. Ayris diagram at left?

Conference and NDLTD Welcome

Professor Peter Robertson, the Vice Principal of RGU, welcomed the delegates to ETD 2008. Then Professor Edward Fox (pictured) , the Executive Director of NDLTD, provided an update on the growth of the global consortium and the current focus of research on ETDs.

Pre-conference Worksops

Pre-Conference parallel workshops took place on Wednesday 4 June. John Hagen led the Newcomers' Workshop (for ETD rookies), while Gail McMillan and Martin Halbert (pictured) led an introduction to facets of Distributed Digital Library Preservation.

The RGU Georgina Scott Library- site of ETD 2008

The Georgina Scott Sutherland Library is a vertical wonder. Open and airy, there are study locations on several floors. Users are so self sufficient...a central Inquiry desk near the front door triages requests from library users and summons librarians that are on-call and steps away.

Welocme to ETD 2008!

• "ETD2008: Spreading the Light" has kicked off at The Robert Gordon University Garthdee Campus, with registration in front of the Georgina Scott Sutherland Library . Some important notes on conference survival:
• All conference sessions take place in the Business School and The Faculty of Health and Social Care Building.
• Luggage may be stored in the Seminar Room within the Library.
• Please wear your badges at all times, to assure access to all venues.
• Please switch off your cellular phones during sessions, in consideration of speakers and those sitting next to you.
• Wireless internet access information is available in your registration packet, with troubleshooting at the registration area.
• An ATM is available in the atrium of the Business School.
• Do not smoke in any campus facility.
• To use RGU Sport (the gym facility), provide proof of membership in a gym to receive a discount.

Winners of the NDLTD ETD Awards Powered by Scirus

Elsevier Announces Winners of the NDLTD-ETD Awards Powered by Scirus: Awards Recognize Excellence in Grey Literature and Highlight Elsevier’s Dedication to the Future Scientific Leaders

AMSTERDAM, 2 June 2008 - Elsevier, world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, is proud to announce the winners of the first awards for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) with the NDLTD-ETD Awards Powered by Scirus. Elsevier Journals Publishing and Scirus, the most comprehensive science-specific search engine, conducted the awards competition in partnership with the NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations), the international organization dedicated to promoting the dissemination and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations, to sponsor this year’s first-ever NDLTD-ETD Awards, which seek to recognize outstanding contributions to the body of electronically available ETD research.

With the advent of the ETDs, and optimized subject-specific search tools like Scirus, it is now easier than ever to access materials that have not been available through traditional publishing alternatives. Once difficult to discover because they consist largely of masters theses and doctoral dissertations stored in print versions at university libraries, vertical search platforms like Scirus have revolutionized access to these valuable, often overlooked materials.

“Elsevier is proud to be working with the NDLTD and recognizing these important additions to the body of scientific knowledge,” said Stephen Cawley, Product Marketing Solutions Manager, Elsevier. “With tools like Scirus, we can now easily access ETDs and other important but often neglected research materials that are hastening the speed of discovery in science and the humanities.”

This year’s winners of the NDLTD-ETD Awards: Powered by Scirus are:

Physical & Life Sciences

• Lawretta Chineze Leaticia Ononye, “The Effect of Implantation Temperature and Ionizing Radiation on the Microstructure of Ion Implanted Sapphire”


• Mohan N. Thakare, “Pharmacological Screening of Some Medicinal Plants as Antimicrobial and Feed Additives”


• Benedikt T. Huber, “Microprocessor Systems Data Transfer Interface Design: An Expert System Approach Using Signal Timing Behavior Patterns”


• Anders Ek, “Ultrasonic Treatment of Sewage Sludge in order to Increase Biogas Yields”


• Louis Lesage, “Écologie Estivale Du Cerf De Virginie A La Limite Nord De Son Aire De Distribution : De La Étapopulation A L'individu”


• Nathan Crane McClintock, “Production and Use of Compost and Vermicompost in Sustainable Farming Systems”


• Danny J.Y.S. Pagé, “Neutron And Gamma Radiation Effects On The Viscoelastic Behaviour Of Poly”


• Gerald W. Ferris, “An Elastic Plastic Approach: Modeling Deformation Of Dense Sand”
  

Business, Social Sciences & Humanities

• Simon A. Nuttgens, “Bereavement Following Suicide: A Narrative Study”


• Mmakgomo Roseline Laka-Mathebula, “Modeling the Relationship Between Organizational Commitment, Leadership Style, Human Resources Management Practices and Organizational Trust”

The 10 winning ETDs were selected through a rigorous selection process which combined a shortlisting of the most downloaded ETDs per subject area through Scirus, and adjudication by scientific editors from Elsevier Journals Publishing unit.

“Elsevier’s recognition of the scientific minds of the future further enhances their position as a forward-thinking company,” said John Hagen, Awards Committee Chair of the NDLTD. “The NDLTD congratulates all of the winners, who are most certainly going to be the drivers of scientific discovery in the years to come.”

“We’re happy to participate in these awards and play a key role in helping to recognize the future published researchers,” said Rose Olthof, Business Development Manager, Elsevier Journals Publishing. “The ETDs that were chosen were of the highest quality and we’re delighted to see such a high caliber of research at the graduate-level.”

The awards will be presented at the ETD 2008 Symposium, to be held June 4-7 at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. Award winners will each receive a $500 cash prize, an NDLTD-ETD Awards: Powered by Scirus medallion and honorary recognition on the Scirus homepage.

You can search Scirus at http://www.scirus.com/

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Finding World Religions in Aberdeen

A Student Services web page at RGU provides guidance about how to find a global representation of religious and spiritual life in Aberdeen. There are also plenty of regularly scheduled services in church and parish locations.