Integrating Electronic Dissertations in a Regular Library Workflow

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich introduced electronic dissertations in the year 2000. During the first phase the ETH Library scanned print dissertations retrospectively and made them available over the Internet. Later authors were encouraged to provide the library with their own digital versions. With this very pragmatic approach a large collection could be built up within a short time. During the initial phase, a special project team was set up to develop the new service. However, the aim of the management was to integrate all electronic dissertations in the regular workflow of the library. Today all electronic documents are processed by the regular departments (exchange section, cataloguing and classification depts). Furthermore, electronic dissertations form part of the library's major electronic publications initiative ETH E-Collection. All electronic dissertations are catalogued in the library system Aleph 500 according to international standards (AACR2, MARC). However, the library also wanted to offer direct access over the ETH E-Collection web pages. For this reason selected metadata is extracted daily from Aleph 500. Perl scripts are used to create HTML title, author and subject lists and individual title pages for all electronic documents. Besides offering access to internal dissertations, the ETH Library tries to integrate metadata into its OPAC from as many external electronic dissertations as possible. This work is done by copy-cataloguing, mainly from the German national bibliography. The task is fully integrated in the regular cataloguing and classification departments. This presentation gives an overview over the chances and problems a library experiences if it tries to integrate a large number of internal and external electronic dissertations into the regular workflow