Viva Voce | Master's | Adrian Chisale | Automatic Generation of Missing ETD Metadata

Postgraduate oral examination involving Adrian Chisale [1], a member of the DataLab research group [2] at The University of Zambia [3].
Viva Voce Details
Adrian Chisale
Dissertation Title: Investigating Approaches for Automatically Generating Electronic Theses and Dissertations Metadata for Higher Education Institutions
Date of Oral Examination; March 21, 2024
Supervisor: Dr. Lighton Phiri
Abstract
There are 61 registered Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Zambia, according to the Higher Education Authority. Efforts are underway to create a National Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) Portal to make it easier to access these documents. However, the diversity of ETD sources presents a challenge in ensuring that ETD metadata is complete and of high quality, which affects the discoverability of ETD digital objects. This study aimed at identifying HEIs with functional Institutional Repositories (IRs), evaluate the relative quality of ETD metadata from HEI IRs, and explore ways to identify the sources of missing metadata elements. Questionnaires were distributed to 61 HEIs in order to identify HEIs with functional and interoperable IRs. In addition, ETD metadata from HEIs with functional IRs was harvested using the OAI-PMH and subsequently analyzed to assess the metadata completeness. After noticing the high number of HEIs that had not activated the OAI-PMH, the online workshop was conducted to orient HEIs on how to activate the OAI-PMH protocol; finally, a combination of document analysis of policy documents and, additionally, content analysis of randomly sampled ETD manuscripts from HEIs with functional IRs was conducted to identify potential sources of missing metadata. Out of 61 HEIs, only 10 (16.39%) of HEIs in Zambia had implemented functional IRs. The ETD metadata analysis indicates that ETD metadata is generally non-compliant with the ETD-MS metadata standard, the de facto metadata schema for ETDs developed by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. The noncompliance was partly observed through missing ETD-MS elements like dc. Contributor and thesis.degree in all IRs in Zambia. The research also observed variations across all HEIs on the location of some ETD-MS metadata elements. However, each HEI maintained homogeneity on the standard outline and format of their ETDs except in a few cases where ETD preliminary pages lacked similar metadata, mostly in HEIs that did not have explicit guidelines on postgraduate programs. The identified sources of ETD-MS missing metadata elements from IRs make it possible for automated extraction techniques to generate missing metadata elements automatically to successfully implement the Zambia National ETD portal for improved visibility of ETDs in Zambia.
Timeline
00:00:00 Dissertation Overview
00:00:18 Presentation Outline
00:00:21 Background
00:01:34 Problem Statement
00:02:10 Research Objectives and Questions
00:02:42 Significance of the Study
00:03:13 Conceptual Framework
00:03:56 Literature Review
00:04:29 Methodology
00:06:17 Limitations
00:06:44 Results and Discussions
00:08:26 Conclusion
00:08:48 Recommendations
00:09:24 Bibliography and Publications
00:09:40 Q&A Invitation
[1] datalab.unza.zm/index.php/peo...
[2] datalab.unza.zm
[3] www.unza.zm