Basic, fuller, fullest: Treatment options for electronic theses and dissertations

Given the thousands of theses and dissertations (TDs) that are produced each year, and their role in advancing their disciplines, it is well worth disseminating them as widely as possible. A great leap forward in increasing TD distribution has been the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) movement. ETD information in catalogs provides valuable basic access, especially when bibliographic records are contributed to large databases. While these bibliographic records can be created automatically by harvesting author-supplied metadata from ETDs, for fuller access, cataloger mediation is needed to remove errors and numeric entities; plus name authority control. Fullest access entails subject analysis.

Research highlights► Electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) are used considerably more than print TDs. ► ETD records created automatically contain errors, omissions, and special characters. ► Name authority control provides disambiguation of authors with the same name. ► ETDs with Subject Headings (LCSH) are 30% more retrievable than with keywords alone.