[Dspace-general] Theses in DSpace

[Margret Branschofsky]

Hello Henk and JQ,

Thanks for responding to my question.  We are planning to use the existing 
qualified DC in DSpace for our theses, but we would like to add a few 
fields for the thesis-specific information, such as thesis department and 
degree granted.  We were originally planning to put the thesis advisor (or 
sponsor or supervisor) under Contributor.advisor and the department and 
degree under Description.department and Description.degree.

But now we are exploring alternatives and seeing what others are using 
before making a decision. The NDLTD schema, for example, uses (simple) 
Dublin Core with the addition of a Degree element and 4:

thesis.degree.name              Name of degree (Masters in Operations Research)
thesis.degree.level             Level of education (masters, doctoral)
thesis.degree.discipline        Area of study (name of department or program)
thesis.degree.grantor   Institution granting the degree

I believe that the Thesis Alive! project is seriously considering using 
this.  I am also in communication with Ed Fox (NDLTD) and Thom Hickey(OCLC) 
to find out how likely it is that the  NDLTD standard will be brought into 
the Dublin Core.  And I'm also trying to find out if the electronic 
thesis/dissertation OAI Union Catalog will ever adopt those fields (So far 
it uses simple DC.)

I have one question for Henk:

>We have adapted DSpace to expert qualified dublin core too, so we can use 
>this field for localized services (web display) in the near future.

I'm assuming you meant "export" in this sentence?  Have you created an XML 
Schema of the DSpace metadata?

Best regards,

Margret

Margret Branschofsky
DSpace User Support Manager
Digital Library Research Group
Bldg. 14S-M24
(617)253-1293
margretb at mit.edu
http://dspace.mit.edu