Edward A. Fox
Director, Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) has developed services around the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) to support the community activities of more than 130 members in sharing multilingual, multimedia electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). This involved several years of discussion leading to ETD-MS, a metadata standard built upon the Dublin Core, with crosswalks with MARC. Virginia Tech hosts a union metadata catalog that involves ETD-MS from contributing universities around the world. VTLS supports searching and browsing using Virtua, while Virginia Tech also provides services using experimental systems such as MARIAN and the component digital library scheme ODL (Open Digital Library). This session will provide an overview of these efforts and explore how universities can participate, and will consider broader questions about the Open Archives Initiative and how it can support community sharing efforts.