Towards Metadata Completeness in National ETD Portals for Improved Discoverability
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Date
2023-11-17
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Publisher
INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar
Abstract
Zambia has 61 registered Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with the Higher Education
Authority. In order to facilitate easy access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs),
works are underway to implement a National ETD portal. The diversity of the ETD source IRs
poses a challenge in ensuring that ETD metadata is of high quality, with respect to the
completeness, adversely affecting discoverability of ETD digital objects. This paper outlines
a study conducted to identify HEIs with functional IRs; empirically assess the relative quality
of ETD metadata from HEI IRs and investigate potential ways of identifying sources of missing
metadata elements. Questionnaires were distributed to 61 HEIs in order to identify HEIs with
functional and interoperable IRs. In addition, ETD metadata from HEIs with functional IRs
was harvested using the Open Archives Initiative for Metadata Harvesting protocol and
subsequently analyzed in order to assess the metadata completeness. Finally, a combination
of document analysis of policy documents and, additionally, content analysis of randomly
sampled ETD manuscripts from HEIs with functional IRs was conducted in order to identify
potential sources of missing metadata. Out of 61 HEIs, only 10 (16.1%) of HEIs in Zambia
had implemented functional IRs. The analysis of ETD metadata indicates that there is generally
non-compliance of ETD metadata to the ETD-MS metadata standard, the de facto metadata
schema for ETDs developed by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. In
order to identify reliable sources of missing metadata elements, content analysis of policy
documents was performed, alongside an analysis of randomly sampled ETD bitstreams.
Potential sources of missing metadata from the ETD bitstream make it possible for automated
extraction techniques to be employed to automatically generate missing metadata elements.
Description
26th International Symposium, ETD 2023, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, 26-28 October, 2023
Keywords
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD), Institutional Repositories, Metadata Quality