1. Growing the MetaArchive Cooperative: ETDs (electronic theses and dissertations)
Gail McMillan
Digital Library and Archives, Virginia Tech
July 2008 NDIIPP Partners Meeting
We’re missing Caroline Arms from LoC who suggested that you might like to know about preservation of ETDs: Electronic Theses and Dissertations.

2. Background of the MetaArchive http://www.metaarchive.org
MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture
LOCKSS
Dark Archive
Conspectus Database
Charter
Membership Agreement
6 universities that began the MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture and evolved into the MetaArchive Cooperative are
Emory
Auburn
Florida St
Georgia Tech
Louisville
And Virginia Tech
Collection-level metadata stored in our Conspectus Database, devised from various existing standards plus a few elements we wanted
Created legal documents: CHARTER and MEMBERSHIP AGREEMENT
Membership: types, fees, benefits/responsibilities
Organization and Governance
Services and Operations
Educopia?

3. Virginia Tech http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses
1st university to require ETDs
Jan. 1, 1997
~12,000 ETDs
NDLTD: National >> Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Some of you may have known VT for
its football team: Beamer Ball or
last year’s April 16 shootings
But before that
1st uni to require graduate students to submit their theses and dissertations electronically.
~ : Dept of Ed. FIPSE: Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education
Today we have about 10,000 Born-digital ETDs, and about 2,000 scanned TDs

4. MetaArchive + NDLTD Share a goal Demonstrate a need
Help higher education institutions provide long-term open access to ETDs
Demonstrate a need
Survey

5. 98 Responses to ETD Survey
15% Assoc. of Research Libraries
11% Assoc. of SE Research Libraries
9% Council of Graduate Schools
10% Digital Library Federation
32% NDLTD, ETD listserv
23% Others
While the MetaArchive Cooperative felt there would be an interest among universities for an ETD Archive,
1/2 of respondents: US universities
1/3: International universities

6. Over 1/3 of those unis accept only the electronic formats
Over 3/4 of the survey responses came from universities that accept ETDs.
Over 1/3 of those unis accept only the electronic formats
We also asked about
File formats
Repository and platform software
How their collections are structured

7. SHOCKER!!
The most surprising response to any question in the ETD Preservation Survey was the response to “Does your institution have a formalized preservation plan for its ETDs?” Only about one-quarter of the universities responding indicated that they have a preservation plan for their ETDs, leaving nearly three-fourths of the universities that accept ETDs without formal preservation plans!

8. Would your institution be interested in participating in an ETD-specific LOCKSS-based collaborative distributed archive sponsored by the NDLTD?
92% Yes or Maybe

9. ETD Preservation Workshop June 4, 2008, Aberdeen, Scotland 11th International Symposium on ETDs
DDPN, LOCKSS, MetaArchive
Roles, responsibilities; ingest basics
Collection prep, metadata, copyright
Charter
Membership Agreement
About 25 attendees to a 1/2-day preconference that Martin Halbert, from Emory University, and MetaArchive director
Survey findings
Overview of distributed digital preservation, LOCKSS, the MetaArchive Cooperative; and requirements; hardware, software, tech support, staff, skills
Roles, responsibilities of members; basics of harvesting and ingest
Preparing a collection for ingest into the ETD archive, how collections should be organized, collection-level metadata, and intellectual property issues
Charter and Membership Agreement

10. Ohmygosh they want to join!!!
MetaArchive Charter
MetaArchive Membership Agreement
Categories
Benefits
Responsibilities
Fees
Really realistic?
Discounts for dual membership: MetaArchive+NDLTD?
Define steps to joining and implementation