Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 1 Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP: from Datatel to Web Stefan Kramer Director of Library Services Fielding Graduate Institute

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 2 Fielding Graduate Institute Private, non-profit, distributed (= face-to-face plus online interaction) education graduate school founded 1974 Located in Santa Barbara, California Students & faculty located throughout USA, students also in other countries Most (of close to 1500) students are “mid-career,” average age mid-40s Academic programs in: Clinical Psychology, Human & Organization Development, Educational Leadership and Change (doctoral degrees), Organizational Management/Organization Development (Master's Degrees and Graduate Certificates)

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 3 Fielding Library Services No physical library, instead: Online third-party databases incl. full- text articles, eBooks, e-journals Reference via , telephone & “live online” All resources and services accessed via web site

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 4 Dissertations submitted to UMI Fielding dissertations submitted in hardcopy to UMI (now part of ProQuest), microfilmed & digitized there Access via ProQuest’s databases Current Fielding Graduate Institute and Digital Dissertations with full text PDFs back to 1997 via subscription

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 5 Fielding has not joined ETD movement (yet) …... because: –Considerable proportion of the student body – all in programs in the social/behavioral sciences, none in technical fields such as engineering – not very comfortable with the use of personal computing tools –In distributed education environment, these students cannot come to a computer lab at any time to be assisted in the creation of „structurally sound“ documents, and the support requirements to do this remotely, given limited resources, appear daunting –Electronic document workflow not universally accepted among faculty –Issue of migration/overlap: current practice vs. “in-house” ETDs … however, it would be good for the Fielding Graduate Institute to join the NDLTD movement, in order to make its graduates’ dissertations available to readers worldwide, including those who cannot or do not want to purchase them via UMI's services

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 6 Creation of web-based catalog of Fielding dissertations No physical library, so no OPAC Dissertation metadata stored in institution’s Datatel system, as one of many attributes of the student (more specifically, of the student’s dissertation committee)

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 7 From Datatel to CSV file Script (runs nightly) extracts data needed for web-based catalog into comma- separated values file: –author’s first and last name –academic program abbreviation (e.g., HOD for Human & Organization Development) –degree awarded (e.g., Ph.D.) –month/year degree awarded –dissertation title

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 8 From CSV file into Access Using macro, CSV file imported into MS Access: extraneous data removed; data types changed; indexes added. Updated & uploaded to web server monthly.

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 9 ASP-based web page generates web-based catalog Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) coding generates the web page that presents the web-based dissertation catalog’s input form, as well as the output of the query, at Code available at:

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 10 Section of web-based dissertation catalog input screen, with sample search for „cohes“ in the dissertation title

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 11 Section of web-based dissertation catalog output screen, with sample search for „cohes“ in the dissertation title

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 12 Reasons for the creation of the web-based catalog of dissertations, and the selection of tools to create it Decision to create Fielding’s web-based catalog of dissertations driven by several goals: –To allow anyone with WWW-access to get basic information about the dissertations written at Fielding (and how they may be obtained) –To allow for querying by a data element that is simply not captured in Digital Dissertations with full text and Current Fielding Graduate Institute at all: in which academic program a dissertation was written –To provide Fielding students, faculty, and staff with basic information about Fielding dissertations months earlier than usually available in Digital Dissertations with full text and Current Fielding Graduate Institute, which can only show dissertations once they have been submitted to, and then processed by, UMI Choice of Microsoft Access & ASP simply because ASP-capable web server was already in place, and Microsoft Access already had been purchased for other purposes, thus requiring no additional expenses

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 13 Future goal: integration of the Fielding-created web- based dissertations catalog with Current Fielding Graduate Institute At present, the web-based dissertations catalog at and UMI’s Current Fielding Graduate Institute complement one another for Fielding users: –the former allowing for queries by academic program and being updated earlier –the latter offering dissertations’ abstracts, full text (going back to 1997), and UMI subject headings However, there is no connection between the two resources; they have to be searched separately

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 14 Future goal: create hyperlinks from web-based dissertations catalog to Current Fielding Graduate Institute for each dissertation that is represented in both systems Hyperlink would appear with each record shown on output screen of dissertation catalog The common element between the two systems would be UMI’s publication number, e.g., „ “ in this example:

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 15 Data file from UMI UMI has already graciously agreed to provide a data file that will allow Fielding to merge these publication numbers into its own database of Fielding dissertations That will allow for the generation of hyperlinks in the format (for example): which would link directly to the record shown in the previous slide

Creation of an online catalog of dissertations using Access & ASP – slide 16 Thank you for your interest! This presentation will be available at Send questions to Stefan Kramer: