[Dspace-general] ETDs and Communities in DSpace

[Richard Jones]

Hi Scott,

At Edinburgh we went for a shallow, school/working group hierarcy and
have separate tree structures for ETDs and other research materials.
The idea was to make it easy to see where the student should submit and
keep logical divisions between what some researchers saw as research
training and actual research.  You can see the hierarcy at:

http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/community-list

Cheers,

Richard

On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 17:01 -0400, Scott P. Muir wrote:
> We are in the early stages of creating a repository of Theses and 
> Dissertations.  I am trying to develop an analysis of our options for 
> organizing materials, especially with an end-user approach.
> 
> My reference librarians advise that most students come in and ask to 
> see all the (print) thesis written by students in a particular 
> discipline, e.g. Biology, History, etc.  If we chose a "communities" 
> structure model that is based on our Colleges and Departments 
> structure that would readily address that issue. However, it could 
> also create a situation where in the initial stages of this work, one 
> might find only one thesis in the History repository, which might not 
> look so good.  On the other hand, if we collected all the thesis into 
> a single "thesis" community, then it becomes harder for the History 
> or Biology department to claim those publications as part of their community.
> 
> As we weigh the pros and cons of the possible approaches, and there 
> are likely others, I thought perhaps many of you had already 
> addressed these questions.  Would anyone out there be willing to 
> share their thoughts, the options you considered and why you chose 
> one particular model over another?  I do realize that this is a 
> question for which there is not a right or wrong answer, but I would 
> be interested in what your processes were.
> 
> My thinking has even led me to ask who is the end user?  Is it a 
> community or is it what we librarians consider our typical library 
> patron, Designing for these two different communities could have 
> different outcomes too.
> 
> Anyway thank you for any assistance you can offer.
> 
> Scott P Muir
> Associate University Librarian
> Bruce T. Halle Library, Room 200F
> Eastern Michigan University
> 955 West Circle Drive
> Ypsilanti, MI  48197-2207
> 
> 734.487.0020 x2222 (voice)
> 734.484.1151 (fax)
> http://www.emich.edu/halle/
> 
> mailto:scott.muir at emich.edu 
> 
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-- 
Richard
-------
Richard Jones                    |
Overingeniør                     | Senior Engineer
Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen | University of Bergen Library

e: richard.jones at ub.uib.no
t: +47 55 58 25 37

BORA: http://bora.uib.no/