Good morning, all of you. I am Ganesan, coming from India. So, just the topic which I have
chosen is issues in transformation of Indian traditional print and born digital thesis
into open access electronic thesis. So, as you know that India is developing in
India and we have started digitizing almost all the electronic resources like electronic
journals, books, thesis, reports and so on. So, this electronic thesis we have started
digitizing. In the sense earlier the universities they used to do it on their own, but now what
happened is in India, a center called the information library network which is a body
for promoting the libraries or establishing network. So, the center which is functioning
for promoting the libraries has taken this job of digitizing all the universities thesis
and they have made it in one public repository called Sotganga. It is a project called Sotganga
where they have kept all the universities thesis. So, each university has to digitize
their thesis and they have to upload to the Sotganga, a project called Sotganga. So,
it will be there in the central server. This is what the project which is being initiated
by information library network. It is a body of university grants commission. Again, university
grants commission is a commission established for looking after the university's development,
funding, all those things. So, these are the concepts. Now, let us see one by one. So,
if you see this, so now as as on today India, India is third largest country producing a
lot of research. In the traditional period, research output was very low and the problem
was they won't give thesis to others. Interlibrary loan is not there and they won't give the
thesis to outside. That is the problem and people used to take the thesis away and tearing
of pages, damage, many things are there. So, this anyway you know because of this internet,
we are able to convert the printed thesis into electronic thesis. So, which is easy to access
at any place, at any time. That is the logic for developing this Sotganga project. So,
open access resources fulfills the information needs. It pays major role to preserve documents
for longer period, enhances dissemination of information, timely access and cost. As I told
you, many IERs have been developed in India, but later this initiative has been taken by
implement information library network. So, what they have done is they have started digitizing
all the universities thesis. India is leading in the open access movement among developing nations.
Why we need institutional repository? As you know India is meant for unity and diversity. We have
28 states and 7 union territories and each state people will have speak their own language. They
have their own customs, they have their own culture, tradition, but it is a country. So,
what there we have many languages like English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kananam like
that we have many languages. So, thesis will come in many languages. Theses are not borrowed,
allowed to borrow. So, digitization started in India from 1990 onwards after that digital
library conference which is being conducted by society of information science Bangalore.
Afterwards most of the universities like IITs, these are only allied institutes in India. IITs
means Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management, Indian Institute of
Science, then NITs, national institute of technologies. So, like that we have many allied
institutions. They have started digitizing the thesis in the initial stage. Then universities
also have started. Then finally this Sotgunga project have come and why you want to create
duplicate work. That is why the Sotgunga project has taken the initiative and they have to digitize
and they have to send it to the central repository. This is what the project. The International
Centre has developed a database in the name of Sotgunga in which the Indian institutions
thesis are uploaded. So, if you see Open Access Initiatives in India, it enables the users to
access the resources simultaneously that we know. IRs in PDF enables academic and research community
positive towards their work being published through web. Sotgunga developed in 2010 by
Internet and as on date they have uploaded 12,884 theses and 6400 synapses. That means
final synapses. They have to upload final thesis also. After getting approval from the research
committee, they have to upload their final synapses into Sotgunga. This is the project.
The repository developed using DSPACE which supports Open Access Initiatives and uses
qualified doubling core scheme for its metadata. For metadata we are following
this what you call doubling core. So, it deploys central server to harvest metadata from all the
ETD repositories. So, what we have assigned the Sotgunga project, the implemented assigned
metadata elements to all the universities. Accordingly, they have to develop metadata
fields and they have to submit their thesis. This is what the project.
It serves as backup archive for the ETD submitted by the universities. Again backup, whenever we
want we can get it from there. So, they will maintain. This is the 2010 this much, 11 this
much and the 2017 it is 2 lakh, 11,800 thesis they have digitized. Other initiatives also
they are implementing Open Access Pools and Standards. Apart from these the implement
information library network which is looking of implementing Open Access Pools and Standards
and open source software for automating the libraries like so. Software for university
libraries and open e-content which is called MOOC, massive online open course. They have
developed and with one database, experts database are available, union catalog many are there.
So, some of the important items I have highlighted here.
So, now let us see uploading of a soft copy of thesis. For developing ETD universities,
I have to sign MOU with the implement. First what we have to see, suppose I want to join with this
implement means I have to go for MOU Memorandum of Understanding.
Based on MOU, it recommends to release funds for digitization. Then this
implement will request university grants commission to fund to the particular university.
So, that is the second stage. At first a thesis are checked by research supervisor for
plagiarism level using Urkund plagiarism detection software. What we are doing is
if a researcher submits thesis, first the research supervisor will check
the plagiarism level whether it is exceeding 10 percent or 20 percent it is fixed by the university.
So, they will check and finally they will approve. Then the scholar has to submit thesis in hard
copy, two copies they have to submit. One is PDF and the other one is third format. After
five hours, the research section sends both print as well as electronic hard copy of thesis. Once
five hours is over, they will send the two copies. One is print and the other one is soft copy.
So, after verification of list full text soft copy of thesis is divided into different
chapters. So, the thesis will be divided into different chapters like preface, title,
declaration, certificate, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter four and five
like that appendix. So, like that the chapters are divided. This is what the metadata fields
see that each university has to follow this metadata because that uniqueness should not
have uniqueness. So, if a university wants to digitize and put it into central repository,
then they have to digitize the thesis according to this format. Then only it will go to the central
repository. So, first one is title page acknowledgement, preface, chapter one,
chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. If many chapters are there, we can add it. There will be
one option add. There you can add chapter eight, chapter nine like that. But here they have given
only chapter up to chapter twelve. Then references all those things. Whichever you don't want,
that you can delete. Suppose the particular chapter you don't want means you can delete.
So, now what uploading? Printed thesis are unbounded. First what we are doing is we are
removing the hot copy of that thesis and bunch of papers are kept in the scanner tray,
which scans automatically. So, we will put the whole thesis automatically. It will scan it
and it will put it as a file, PDF file. So, the total file will be there in one file.
So, pages, pictures are scanned using a black and white model. So, to minimize the storage,
then each thesis is saved as one file. Indexing is done for each thesis with the name of researcher.
What are all the aspects the users will look for like author, title, guide. Only those items
are indexed. Then OCR is used for retrieval facility because this is once if it is scanned
means it is a picture file. So, there we cannot index it. That is why we are applying OCR,
optical character recognition, which is a software which will recognize the, which will
convert the picture into character, sorry text, so that we can search through author, we can search
through title, we can search through researcher. So, this is what we are using. Using OCR distorted
lines like noise, skew, suppose if something is skew or somewhere dots are there, those things
will be removed. And using most of this, then pages are scanned using black and white mode
with the 300 that is the mandatory, the how to each university has to follow, 300 DQA dots.
Image, edges which are not useful are removed, edges also will be removed.
So, this is the process of digitization and uploading of this is ministry of HRD,
ministry of human resource development. So, this is the ministry comes for higher education and
elementary education for all education. Ministry of HRD, human resource development,
it is a separate ministry which is looking after the education department.
So, from there UGC developed information and library network, network for network
university libraries in India. Under the MHRD, there is one more body is called UGC,
University Grants Commission, which has developed information library network.
It is a body meant for promoting the library networks. So, then Infiliminate Center developed
again Infiliminate's developed project ETD repository, framing guidelines, metadata
and recommends UGC to fund the universities to digitize this. What this
infiliminate is doing is it is asking the UGC to give fund, then guidelines, what are all the
guidelines the university has to follow for digitization purpose, MOU. Then metadata, what
are all the metadata the particular university has to follow, all these things will be
specified by the, all these items are specified by the information library network.
Universities will digitize, runs OCR for converting images into searchable text
performance, bond digital thesis split into different files as per metadata and finally
uploads thesis into South Ganga ETD repository. This is the whole procedure for converting
what you call printed thesis into electronic thesis.
So, this is what I just you can see then we have to upload. University name is there, then
university department is there, we have to click the department. First we have to enter
university name. Suppose you are digitizing your thesis, then you should enter your university
name, then you should click your department, then department and many details are there,
no just what are all name of the researcher, name of the guide. For example, I have given my name
and my student name and type of degree PhD when registration started and convinced he has
completed the thesis and awarded it. When the thesis is being awarded, all the details
we have to enter, we have to enter all the details. So, next one is the same thing, again that is the
title of thesis, again abstract if you want you can put your abstract also here and note any note
keywords, what all the keywords are there that you can put it language, which language. Suppose if
it is Hindi, you can select Hindi, Hindi citation reference, citation reference, how many of them
cited, how many citation have been used, submitted by university or department, which one copyright,
copyright is visited with university, then submission details, these are the details you
have to give, then only it will allow you to submit, then chapter you have to upload the chapters.
So, preservation of documents falls under copyright act, in India if you come to
preservation of the decision of thesis, it comes under copyright act 1957. Indian languages have
manuscripts, have several hundreds of characters, the characters which are not being identified by
OSIA. For example, if you put five, it may recognize that it is yes sometimes, if you
put it zero, it may recognize that it is a war. So, some of the items sometimes the OSIA will not
convert the letters, then what we have to do is we have to manually convert that one, we have to go
and change. So, those things also manually we have to do it, otherwise it won't convert, it will be
same like picture for me. Language users find difficulty, since they don't have knowledge
on language keys and even in virtual keys, they have to use two keys for a single
letter. Again, suppose English means that they can simply type one letter, but if it is Hindi or if
it is Malayalam, they have to have one letter, they have to use two keys, then they are finding
little difficulty. Then, in spite of many awareness programs, they face problems in creating soft
copy of thesis using metadata fields and uploading. See metadata fields, if we give awareness
about the metadata fields, even then they are not able to understand. So, they are facing a little
bit problem with that. Then, copyright and plagiarism were other issues, these problems
are so existing, they afraid to submit through online, because most of the researchers, they
don't want to submit through online, they have their own inhibition, like whether we have copied
or not. Even if they have written on their own, sometimes they are feeling that we have done
some mistake, whether we have copied somewhere like that, they have some kind of intricacies there
with the researchers. But anyway, they have, it is mandatory, they have to submit. There is no
clear-cut copyright rules also. Again, clear-cut copyright rules in the sense,
whether the copyright is vested with the student or vested with the university,
but somehow we are managing and we are doing this one. So, again it's a problem.
So, though a research scholar submits soft copy of thesis in two file formats, as I told you,
they have to submit the thesis into two files. One is PDF file and MS Word. Sometimes there is
variation between print and the soft copies. The problem is, they will submit thesis copy and they
will go. When we open it, then there is mismatch between the print thesis and the soft copy.
Sometimes the variations are there. There in print, 200 pages will be there. In the soft
copies, it will be 220 pages. So, again we have problem. So, because we are doing, in library,
we are doing this, because when the soft copy comes, we have to divide the soft copies into
different metadata fields. When we are dividing, we are facing problems. That's what I'm, that is
the reason I'm telling you. Sometimes the files are not able to open. Sometimes what is happening
is they will submit and go. The research section will send the soft copy to the library. When we
open the file, it won't work. It won't work. Again, it's a problem for us. This is one,
in one discipline, is uploaded in other disciplines. Sometimes what's happening is in the
repository, some universities, instead of putting into economics, they might have put in chemistry.
So, if we go to economics, we are not able to find it. So, these are the problems we are facing that
those things we are writing to the repository, both in the project and we are rectifying something.
And choosing the best software, technical stop, technical stop is mandatory.
Guidelines for digitization and copyright clearance, metadata format standards should be
kept in mind. So, these are the some issues which we have to keep it in our mind before digitization
of this. These are the items which we come across while digitization of our thesis.
Thank you. If you have any questions, please.