OATD.org update
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Thomas Dowling
Apr 1, 2016, 2:22:11 PM4/1/16
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Today is OATD.org's third birthday! We launched on April 1, 2013. OATD now indexes over three million freely available theses and dissertations. We make every effort to exclude embargoed or otherwise restricted papers, and to deduplicate records from multiple sites, so our total comes out lower than some other sites. OATD has records from over 1100 universities in 52 countries. [https://oatd.org/oatd/charts/world-map]
Over the past couple of months, the site has rolled out a few updates:
I'm happy to note that a growing number of repositories share their metadata in formats more robust that unqualified Dublin Core. This helps communicate information about the degree and discipline for which the paper was written, embargo status and release dates, and other information.
I'm also happy to have institutional support to run the server, and access to a good sysadmin who can help with things like the massive web crawling a site like this gets.
As always, if you work with your institution's OA ETDs and they aren't included, drop me a line.Over the past couple of months, the site has rolled out a few updates:
Minor interface tweaks in general and a friendlier interface for mobile devices. About 18% of OATD search sessions come from mobile devices.
Some records now display cited references:
[https://oatd.org/oatd/record?record=oai\:openscholarship.wustl.edu\:eng_etds-1005&q=%22carbon%20dioxide%22%20%22gas%20recovery%22]
(or https://goo.gl/oscRu1)
Some records also now display a "visually interesting page" instead of a title page (based on an idea - and code! - from Mark Phillips: http://vphill.com/journal/post/5826/). Along with sample images that OATD already included, this can give researchers additional information about which papers may be interesting to download and read. You can see an example here:
https://oatd.org/oatd/search?q=nanocrystalline+semiconductor+detectors
[https://oatd.org/oatd/record?record=oai\:openscholarship.wustl.edu\:eng_etds-1005&q=%22carbon%20dioxide%22%20%22gas%20recovery%22]
(or https://goo.gl/oscRu1)
Some records also now display a "visually interesting page" instead of a title page (based on an idea - and code! - from Mark Phillips: http://vphill.com/journal/post/5826/). Along with sample images that OATD already included, this can give researchers additional information about which papers may be interesting to download and read. You can see an example here:
https://oatd.org/oatd/search?q=nanocrystalline+semiconductor+detectors
I'm happy to note that a growing number of repositories share their metadata in formats more robust that unqualified Dublin Core. This helps communicate information about the degree and discipline for which the paper was written, embargo status and release dates, and other information.
I'm also happy to have institutional support to run the server, and access to a good sysadmin who can help with things like the massive web crawling a site like this gets.
--
Thomas Dowling
Director of Technologies, Z. Smith Reynolds Library
Director of Technologies, Z. Smith Reynolds Library
Wake Forest University
President, Library and Information Technology Association (LITA)
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