Gunjal, Bhojaraju & Urs, Shalini R (2010): Knowledge Organisation Systems in ETDs: A Comparative Study; In Proceedings of 13th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD 2010); June 16 -18, 2010, Austin, TX, USA. https://conferences.tdl.org/utlibraries/etd2010/paper/view/28

1. Knowledge Organisation Systems in ETDs:
A Comparative Study
Bhojaraju Gunjal
Research Scholar,
Department of Library
and Information Science,
University of Mysore,
India.
Shalini R Urs
Executive Director,
International School of
Information Management,
University of Mysore,
India.
Gunjal, Bhojaraju & Urs, Shalini R (2010): Knowledge Organisation Systems in ETDs: A Comparative Study;
In Proceedings of 13th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD 2010); June 16 -
18, 2010, Austin, TX, USA. https://conferences.tdl.org/utlibraries/etd2010/paper/view/28

2. 2
Outline
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Part 1: Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs): An overview of
selected ETD cases
 Overview of selected ETD for KOS Study
 Collections, Classification and organization of materials
 Search capability and User Interface
 Part 2: Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS): An Overview
 Common Characteristics of KOS
 Levels of KOS
 Summary and Conclusions
 Appendices
 A1. Comparative study of KOS in ETDs
 A2. Growth of ETDs

3. 3
Abstract
 Enormous growth of digital information over the web - including
Digital Libraries (DLs)
 Issue of organization has attracted attention - led to many efforts
includes the Semantic Web.
 Due to this, information organization, information retrieval and the
interface showing search results have posed several challenges to the
information scientists in these research areas.
 This research paper aims to study the deployment of KOS in major
DLs including ETDs of the world.
 An attempt has been made to integrate the existing ETD collection
in DSpace with other OpenSource tools to deploy KOS features such
as Concept Maps or Information Visualization. This will enhance the
user interface and will help to get the results in more user-friendly
and intuitive ways.

4. 4
Introduction
 Aim: to examine the current trends in the methods of Knowledge
Organisation (KO) in DLs and ETDs.
 Objective: to analyze the various aspects of KOS in selected ETDs.
 Growth of ETDs in the world during 2005 – 2010
 ETD Initiatives by 46
 ETD Collections by 6,19,073
 Study is divided in to two parts
 Part 1 gives an overview of the selected ETD cases and
 Part 2 provides information on KOS study and its analysis
 KOS features are broad in nature, thus it is difficult to cover all of
these within the scope of research study plan. An attempt has been
made to cover the most important aspects here.

5. 5
Part 1 : ETDs: An overview of selected ETD cases
 Overview of the selected ETDs
 Scope: limited to selected twenty ETDs of the world.
 7 are from the USA,
 4 from Australia,
 2 from UK and India and
 One each from Africa, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Germany
 Selection Parameters:
 the type of ETDs such as University or Consortium or Service Provider,
 types of the software used and
 kind of information storage and retrieval system
 Various KOS features of the selected ETDs were collected from their
websites, journal articles, information published on the Web and
Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).
(Contd..)

6. 6
Part 1: ETDs: An overview of selected ETD
cases (Contd..)
Analysis:
 Search capability and User Interface
 Most of the ETDs use - Simple and Advanced search
 Browse option is also available with various fields.
 Provide various user interfaces
 Keyword with Boolean operator options
 Few ETDs provide options for Search history, filtering, sorting, federated search
mechanism
 Some ETDs provide options like – to save or send search results through mail
 DSpace tool is used by four universities i.e. MIT, LUIR–UK, VDL and etd@IISc.
 Other tools such as ETD-db, Fedora, DigTool, ContentDM were used by each
universities as mentioned above.
 Multilingual Support is provided by 3 Universities. Ex: HKUTO, GNL and VDL
See attachment

7. 7
Part 2: Knowledge Organization Systems
(KOS): An Overview
 KOS is a general term referring among other things, to the tools that
present the organized interpretation of knowledge structures.
 KOS such as –
 classifications,
 gazetteers,
 lexical databases,
 ontologies,
 taxonomies and
 Thesauri - model the underlying semantic structure of a domain

8. 8
Common Characteristics of KOS
 Hodge describes the common characteristics of KOS as below:
“There is no single knowledge classification scheme on which everyone
agrees. Michael Lesk speculates that while a single KOS would be
advantageous, it is unlikely that such a system will ever be developed. Culture
may constrain the knowledge classification scheme so that what is meaningful
to one culture is not necessarily meaningful to another. Therefore, we live in a
world of multiple, variant ways to organize knowledge”.
 Despite their diversity, KOSs have the following common
characteristics that are critical to their use in organizing digital
libraries.
 KOS imposes a particular view of the world on a collection and the items in it.
 same entity can be characterized in different ways, depending on the KOS
implemented.
 There must be sufficient commonality between the concept expressed in a KOS
and the real-world object.

9. 9
Levels of KOS
Based on the above analysis
 Maximum number of ETDs falls under KOS level 1 i.e. which meets the
minimum criteria of classification and categorization of documents
 Very few ETDs fall under KOS level 2 and 3 of KOS. This indicates that
there is a need to meet the next level of KOS features and require
attention in those areas.
 In ETDs, level 3 of KOS has not attained by any of the selected ETDs.
Hence, an attempt has been made to integrate the KOS concepts for the
existing ETD collection. For Ex: In VDL, an effort is made to integrate the
existing ETD collection in DSpace with other OpenSource tools (Ex.:
Spacetree, CMap) to deploy KOS features such as Concept Maps or
Information Visualization. This will enhance the user interface and will
help to get the results in more user-friendly and intuitive ways.
Levels of
KOS
KOS features ETD analysis
Level 1
Classification and Categorization schemes,
taxonomies
NDLTD, OCLC, ETDs@VT, Index to Theses, Theses Canada, ADT
Program, DATAD Program, OhioLINK, Arrow, IBICT, HKUTO,
DSpace@MIT, UoA-ETD, GNL, LUIR–UK, VDL, etd@IISc, VUIR,
UoMDR, DU-ETDs
Level 2 Subject headings and Authority files GNL
Level 3 Thesauri, Semantic networks and Ontologies HKUTO, UoMDR, VUIR, VDL

10. 10
Summary and Conclusions
The major findings of this study are summarized as below:
 ETDs focus on thesis metadata via the Open Archives Initiative's
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and participating
universities should ensure OAIPMH compliant for easy harvesting.
 Most of the ETD’s search interfaces are through– Simple Search,
Advanced Search and Browse with various fields.
 Few ETDs provide option to Browse by Advisor/Thesis Guide. Ex:
VDL, etd@IISc
 Some ETDs provide - multilingual support, tools and standards for
different languages. Ex: VDL, HKUTO
 ETDs use other search engines such as Google Search Appliance,
Scirus. Ex: ETDs@VT, NDLTD, HKUTO
 Distributed Database is powered by HotMeta. Ex: ADT
 Few ETDs decided to switch to a digital model of theses acquisitions
directly from the Universities. Ex: These Canada (plan by 2014).
(Contd..)

11. 11
Summary and Conclusions (Contd..)
 Most of the Universities use PDF format. Ex: ADT Participants, VDL,
UoA-ETD, HKUTO
 Some ETDs have restricted access and to subscribers only. Ex:
DATAD Program, Index to Theses
 Some universities have mandated/changed the ETD submission
process to benefit students by making it almost paperless. Ex:
University of Cincinnati, LUIR–UK
 Search results can also be exported to other formats such as ASCII,
BibTex, EndNote, etc and several other reference formats. Ex: VUIR
 Use of Manakin as new interface to the DSpace digital repository. Ex:
LDL@DRTC
 Growth of ETDs during 2005 – 2010 has been increased among
universities and other organizations shown in Appendix 2. Growth
shows increase in ETD initiatives by 46 and in ETD Collections by
6,19,073.

12. Thank You

13. 13
Appendices
 This study includes 2 appendices:
 A1. Comparative study of KOS in ETDs
 A2. Growth of ETDs
See attachment

14. Search/User Interfaces in ETDs

15. 15
SCIRUS ETD Search interface Ex: NDLTD

16. 16
Search Interface in ePrints Ex: VUIR

17. 17
Search Interface in VDL Indian Theses database
(Metadata)

18. 18
Search interface in OhioLINK ETD Center

19. 19
SCIRUS ETD Search interface Ex: HKUTO

20. 20
Search Interface in Manakin - front end for DSpace
Ex: LDL@DRTC

21. 21
Search interface in DigiTool Ex: UoMDR

22. 22
Search interface in Fedora/Vital
Ex: ARROW Repository

23. 23
Search interface in ContentDM
Ex: Duquesne University