It made sense for Caltech, the California Institute of Technology (a private, technically focused, U.S. university, http://www.caltech.edu), to go electronic when it comes to theses.  It took, however, more than three years: From March 1999 when Prof. Ed Fox of the Virginia Technical University spoke at Caltech to July 2002 when ETDs became required for all PhD candidates.  How was it done and what are the lessons learned

Coles, Betsy

Douglas, Kimberly

Porter, George S.

Van de Velde, Eric

English

Caltech Authors - Main

, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 1 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechLIB:2003.003 
Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
Title:  Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD 
Author:  Kimberly Douglas, Betsy Coles, George Porter, Eric Van de Velde 
Organization:  California Institute of Technology 
Email:   kdouglas@caltech.edu 
Address:   MC 1-43, Pasadena, CA 91125 
Url:    http://library.caltech.edu 
Keyword:   Liaison librarian faculty graduate dean copy of record 
voluntary submission file size LaTeX template Framemaker thesis regulations 
persistent URL unique identifier 
 
Abstract 
It made sense for Caltech, the California Institute of Technology (a private, technically focused, 
U.S. university, http://www.caltech.edu), to go electronic when it comes to theses.  It took, however, 
more than three years: From March 1999 when Prof. Ed Fox of the Virginia Technical University 
spoke at Caltech to July 2002 when ETDs became required for all PhD candidates.  How was it 
done and what are the lessons learned?  
 
Table of Contents 
1 Introduction 
2 Phase One: Voluntary Submission 
2.1 Preparation 
2.2 Experience 
3 Phase Two: Requiring the ETD 
3.1 Preparation 
3.2 Experience 
4 Conclusion 
, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 2 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechLIB:2003.003 
Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
1 Introduction 
The California Institute of Technology is a small, highly focused  private research university in the 
United States that values being on the leading edge of new technologies.  The administration and 
faculty expect individuals, campus organizations or departments to achieve that objective by self-
initiated entrepreneurial methods.  This is instinctive in the research culture on campus and is 
therefore not necessarily consciously acknowledged nor even understood by the practitioners.  
Therefore, it behooves the library administration to so thoroughly understand this culture that 
innovative projects are launched with a minimum of bureaucracy and process.  Yet it must still be 
done well and successfully.  
 
Caltech p roduces about 150 PhD theses per year.  These breakdown as follows: Engineering = 
42%; Chemistry 23%; Physics 12%; Biology 10%; Geology 8% Math 2%; Political Science 2%; 
Economics 1%.  In the spring of 1999, Ed Fox came to campus and made a presentation to enlist 
increased participation in the electronic thesis (NDLTD 1) effort.  Both the Vice Provost and the 
Graduate Dean attended that presentation and with continuing agitation and encouragement from 
the library administration, the Graduate Dean agreed that Caltech should embark on this initiative.  
The one issue that concerned him was the impact this project would have on the contractual 
relationship that Caltech and most U.S. universities have with University Microfilms now Proquest.  
Fortunately, the University Microfilms has taken a non-exclusive position and is committed to 
peaceful coexistence with the NDLTD.      
 
2 Phase One: Voluntary Submission of the ETD 
The Caltech Libraries successfully launched its ETD effort to the Caltech community in the spring 
of 2001. 
2.1 Preparation  
In the two years between March of 1999 and June 2001 library staff prepared the basic platform for 
the ETD:  
1.  Selected and implemented an applications program.  A single applications developer was 
identified who worked on this project part-time in combination with other duties.  The ETD-
db (NDLTD) software was selected largely because it was free and was openly supported 
by the developers at Virginia Tech.  In addition it was OAI compliant; it met design criteria 
necessary for a repository of theses and provided a functional user interface.  This 
software met our requirements of no cost and it supported the capability to restrict access 
to specified  files.  The latter was not supported by other applications, such as Eprints.  
2.  Established  the policy and syntax for a unique and persistent identifier and in connection 
with the library’s other digital collection projects developed a permanent resolver 
mechanism, the PURR .2  Each thesis is assigned a unique identifier by the ETD -db 
                                                             
1 National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations  
2 Sponsler, Ed (2001) PURR - The Persistent URL Resource Resolver. 
, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 3 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechLIB:2003.003 
Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
(NDLTD) software. The identifier is exported in the OAI_dc metadata (OAI Dublin Core 
metadata subset) and is used in the URL to point to the service page. Since it is unique to 
the archive, it can be used by the resolver to make an ETD Persistent URL. Even though 
the identifier number is created by this specific application software, the Caltech Libraries 
will permanently maintain the same unique identifier for the thesis even if the application 
software were to change. 
Example: 
Unique Namespace Identifier: CaltechETD 
 
ETD-db Unique Local Namespace Specific String  or identifier: 
 etd-11252001-103911 
 
ETD Persistent URL: 
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-11252001-103911 
3.  Continued developing interest on campus and gaining permissions of the Graduate Deans.  
Caltech had undergone turnover in Graduate Deans.  The Grad Dean of 1999, who was 
present for Ed Fox’s presentation in the spring of 1999, was not the same Dean in 2000 -01 
nor  the same in 2002-03.  The primary rationale was the necessity of advancing Caltech’s 
operations into the networked digital environment.  Caltech’s deans are also active 
researchers with graduate students and a teaching requirement.  The library’s arguments 
resonated with the perspective that the students were also bringing to the table.3   
2.2 Experience  
In June of 2001, the then Graduate Dean announced that PhD candidates who wished could 
voluntarily submit an electronic version of their theses to the Caltech site.  The library provided only 
very minimal support at that time.  The student needed to have already prepared a PDF file from 
whatever source application they used.  A PhD candidate who wished could connect to the Caltech 
ETD site and submit the electronic version of their thesis.   
 
Of  the 299 theses of 2001  and 2002, sixty-three (63) were submitted voluntarily from the following 
disciplines.  : Engineering_22_; Biology_9_; Chemis try_12_; Geology_8_; Physics_11_; Math _1_.  
None were submitted from Economics or Political Science. 
The students who participated  the library’s effort experienced very few problems.  Many students 
also voluntarily submitted positive comments referring to their desire to make their work more 
generally available.  The students saw the posting of their thesis as a constructive step in making 
themselves known within the research community. 
 
                                                             
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechLIB:2001.003 
3 Graduate students in 2001 were, on average, about 26-27 years old.  They were about 20, juniors 
in college, when the WWW gained ubiquitous following. 
, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 4 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
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Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
3 Phase Two: Requiring the ETD 
Now that interest had been raised and the library staff were gaining practical experience at a 
volume that allowed for constructive learning, it was time to address the issues necessary for a 
successful mandatory submission. 
3.3 Preparation  
Over the following months, September 2001 to April of 2002, library staff addressed the issues that 
essential to making the ETD submission mandatory.  The Library established a team of four: Head 
of Technical Services, two subject librarians and the systems application developer maintaining the 
ETD-db software.  In addition, one of the senior library managers provided guidance and 
encouragement as needed to negotiate new relationships with interested parties on campus.  
Together this group worked through the various implementation issues:  Refining policies and 
procedures with the Graduate Office and guiding users to appropriate tools and instructions via a 
website and in briefing sessions in the library;  
1. A Website http://library.caltech.edu/etd/ with advice, guidance, requirements and 
instructions was created.  PDF was established as the primary acceptable format.  For 
multimedia files  the library chose to accept the same list of formats that University 
Microfilms accepts.  The official document of the Graduate Office, “Caltech PhD Thesis 
Regulations” as revised to include the ETD submission preparation and process.  This 
was done by library staff rather than await the availability and inclination of the 
Graduate Office staff  
2. The team developed a briefing session for the students providing the essentials of 
what they needed to know and do to prepare an electronic thesis.  In these sessions 
issues of acceptable fonts, preparation of images; size of single file theses and how to 
segment a theses for optimal us ability; creation of multiple versions to address various 
resolution and color options; naming the files for optimal presentation were covered.  In 
addition copyright issues are explained both from the authors and the publishers’ point-
of-view.  Subject liaison librarians were also educated to these issues to lead 
orientation classes for graduate students and to participate in trouble-shooting 
responses. 
3. Library staff established a cooperative relationship with staff of Caltech’s Digital Media 
Center who provide technical support for digital publishing tools.   With the launching of 
the required electronic thesis , the DMC offered a specific class instructing authors on 
the mechanics of creating a PDF for Long Documents and Dissertations.4  In 
collaboration with past graduates templates for Word, LaTeX and Framemaker were 
created and offered to the students.   
4. The ETD-db interface for author submissions was revised to meet Caltech needs and 
to provide additional guidance in the process. 
                                                             
4 Carolyn Patterson of the Digital Media Center at Caltech prepared extensive explanations on how 
to package large documents in pdf.  These instructions are available at: 
http://morel.caltech.edu/classes/pdfs/0612PDF%20for%20Long%20Documents.pdf 
 
, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 5 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
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Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
5. Library procedures for handling print theses were revised.  Only one paper copy is now 
needed and it is often printed from the submitted etd.  Since information about the 
thesis committee for the thesis is entered into the metadata for the etd though it is not 
actually carried in the work itself, catalogers add that information to the catalog record.  
6. The library continued to require the printed theses, though it was expected to be a 
bound copy of the printed PDF file to ensure that the printed copy and the electronic 
copy were the same.  Furthermore the printed theses would continue to be the “copy of 
record” or the archival copy. 
7. The Library acquired a campus site license for the Adobe Acrobat package greatly 
facilitating production of PDF on Windows and MacOS workstations.  Further, it 
provides the necessary tool for combining and  segmenting PDFs for optimal access 
management. 
 
In April of 2002, the Library staff made a formal presentation to the Graduate Studies Committee at 
which the new Website for the ETD was debuted.  Later in May 2002, the Dean of Graduate 
Studies made the ETD submission required for all PhD candidates as of July 2002.  
 
3.4 Experience  
The most serious concern was raised by the Graduate Student representative, who, though 
recognizing that most Caltech graduate students would have no difficulty preparing a PDF 
document, was concerned that there w ould be a few who would encounter difficulty.  Given the 
deadlines that a Grad student has to meet, there was concern that students not be faced with more 
steps.  The committee  did discuss without conclusion the nature of the printed theses versus the 
electronic theses.  The library decided that it would continue to add a printed copy of the theses to 
the collection.  In fact, the library decided to keep the printed theses as the version of record thus 
avoiding a potentially controversial issue.  At the meeting, it was clear that the faculty still felt very 
strongly that the research results in a thesis needed to be “written -up” in a proper manner.  It was 
considered still very much necessary that a student articulate in English the nature of their work.  
Media, images, datasets would not suffice to describe and document the work, although such could 
be added to augment the work.   
The primary issue had to do with the size of files.  Some astrophysics theses with images could be 
as much as a few thousand MB 5.  This was not reasonable for downloading.   Guidance for dividing 
a single thesis into separate files needed to be established.  In addition, questions were raised 
about how to restrict access to portions of a thesis for patenting purposes.  There were als o a few 
questions having to do with making editing corrections to the thesis after it had been uploaded.  
Some students followed up to be sure that the abstract to the thesis was presented well in the 
NDLTD environment.  
 
                                                             
5 To be specific, a biochemistry thesis came in at 7500 MB.  The student did segment it so that all 
portions were smaller than 300 MB.   
, 
 
Douglas,Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD,  ETD 2003, Berlin, Germany. Page 6 of 6  
Unique Identifier: CaltechLIB:2003.003 
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Copyright Kimberly Douglas 2003, 
Permission is granted for noncommercial research and educational use, reproduction and distribution of 
this work provided credit is given. 
4 Conclusion 
Two deliberate decisions  greatly assisted quick implementation of the etd requirement::  The 
subject liaison librarians were involved in the implementation.  This spread the workload over a 
larger public service staff resulting not only in a manageable additional burden to each but also in 
gaining their energy and excitement toward making this project a success.  Their liaison 
responsibilities and experience facilitated reaching out to the various departmental groups on 
campus.  Also, the premier role of the bound printed thesis in the traditional launching of an 
academic career was not challenged.  The library decoupled the concept of requiring an electronic 
thesis and establishing  the copy of record.  Students and faculty are more likely to try new 
approaches if the risk is low.  Faculty, particularly, are conservative by nature and are legitimately 
concerned about the career impact on their students of some of the changes in the digital era.  By 
maintaining the print thesis as the copy of record, the electronic version while including the text of 
the printed theses can contain additional content in different formats or even different versions of 
the thesis to accommodate more adventurous presentation media.  We are just beginning to see 
this occur as we conclude the first year of required electronic theses.   
 
The Caltech Libraries implementation of the ETD requirement was definitely one that required 
planning and an organizational willingness to learn from concurrent experience.  Not all issues 
were solved or were even explicitly addressed.  Archiving procedures remain to be thoroughly 
worked out.  To a large extent it is our assessment that all perspectives on true archiving are 
somewhat preliminary and await the promulgation of ubiquitously followed standards and robust 
tools for both author and digital archivist.   These are evolving certainly.  In the meantime, we do 
encourage authors to submit the source files of their thesis whenever possible.  These are kept 
hidden from the database user and are intended to be used solely fo r file format migration 
purposes.  Additionally, as more students responded to the requirement of an ETD, more faculty 
have been tangibly touched causing challenging feedback in regard to the bureaucracy and 
formalities involved in the awarding of a PhD.  Nevertheless, the overall commitment by the faculty 
is great enough to assure that the questions will be overcome.   
 
Not all problems are completely solved.  It is absolutely not a turn-key process.  We realized that 
some issues will need to be resolved o ver time.  The voluntary ramp-up period allowed library staff 
the window to develop the essential tools and procedures and to identify the critical issues. The 
most important result is that we have managed to create a climate wherein all students must 
participate yet with little or no risk.  This allowed the campus community to demonstrate to 
themselves that creating and submitting an ETD is neither onerous nor impossible.  We’ve been 
successful by being flexible and nimble to respond aggressively, knowledgeably and quickly when 
needed.   


Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD

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Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD

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