Sharing Collaborative Approaches and Community Insights on ETD Management in Canada. USETDA 2025.

Hello and welcome to session 16. We're going to be talking about sharing collaborative approaches and community insights on ETD management in Canada. Sharing this information with you is Julia Gilmore from the scholars portal. My name is John Hagen and I'll be your moderator for the next 50 minutes. We will reserve 5 to 10 minutes at the end of the session for discussion. And a quick reminder before we begin, um, uh, please, uh, mute your audio, uh, and feel free to use the Zoom chat tab to ask questions which will be addressed during the discussion segment. Thank you all for joining us, and I'll turn it over to Julia. >> Great. Thanks, John. I'm just going to share my screen if I see the right bar. showing up. Okay, one second. Okay, so hopefully that looks all right. Perfect. I see a thumbs up from John. Thanks. Okay, well, thank you so much for for sticking around. It's the evening here. Uh I'm I'm joining from uh Toronto in Canada. Uh so, thanks for for joining uh one of the last sessions of the symposium. It's been a really wonderful uh wonderful time over the last two days. So, I'm grateful to to get to join you today and to tell you a little bit about a new shared repository service in Canada that we're developing called Solaris and also sharing some reflections on developing the community building blocks for the service. So, my name is Julia Gilmore as as John uh introduced me. I'm the digital projects librarian at Scholarsportal which is a department at the University of Toronto Libraries uh and al also the technical service provider for the Ontario University Library Consoria which is called OAL. Perhaps more pertinent to tonight's uh presentation, I am the librarian service lead for the Solaris service which I'm really thrilled to get to tell you a little bit more about tonight. Okay. So I'll start with a a brief overview of Solaris. It is a new national opt-in shared repository service that aims to support open discovery management, sharing and preservation of Canadian scholarship. So the ground was planted for Scalaris. uh many years ago uh there were some investigations happening both at the regional and national uh level in Canada exploring the feasibility of shared institutional repository infrastructure uh with members of the repository community. So these various assessments and feasibility studies confirmed that there was strong interest and opportunities for a shared model that could provide a number of benefits to repository uh staff and institutional libraries including economies of scale, centralized technical support and collective resource development that would also help address some of the pain points in repository management uh that were identified through the surveys and also ensure that Canadian IRS remain viable and attractive options for stewarding Canadian scholars. ship. So all of this kind of came to a head in the fall of 2023. So I guess two two years ago at this point uh when an agreement was signed between the Canadian Association of Research Libraries uh which is called CARL the University of Toronto and the Ontario Council of University Libraries OAL to develop this shared repository service. Our role at Scholars Portal is as the technical service provider uh for Scolaris. We're building the infrastructure, hosting the platform, and managing the service uh using the DSpace software. We're also running an early adopter program uh over a two-year period. The early adopter program I'll I'll talk a little bit about um on one of the next slides. And the goal of that program is really to inform the development of the service. Complementing these efforts, Carl, which is the Canadian Association for Research Libraries, are leading the development of the governance and financial model for the service through an advisory committee uh the shared shared repository infrastructure advisory committee and they're also coordinating the Skeeris network of expert groups who are offering key uh key guidance on specific areas of repository management. one of those expert groups, the ETD expert group uh is what I'll be focusing the second half of the presentation on. Okay. So, as uh expected uh the technical infrastructure is really a fundamental component of the service. We look at Solaris as having two pillars technical and community infrastructure. So, from the technical side, the service model consists of hosting and managing parallel DSpace instances using a software as a service model. Each subscribing institution receives their own branded uh DSpace instance and that consists of both a development site and a production site and those are all hosted on dedicated virtual machines on scholars portal services uh at the University of Toronto. I won't go too far into the technical uh weeds but uh I'll just share a little bit about the model uh that may be of interest. Uh so we keep the code in uh gitlab and then we use an open source version of chef which is a configuration manager to automate the management of the code to the various institutions uh the various dspace instances and that's how we roll out uh updates and upgrades and sort of manage all of the the code across the instances. institutions have front-end access to their own instances and backend access. So, server command line access is all restricted to the Solaris technical team. Any local customizations that the institutions request and we know there's lots of different customizations that you can have on the institutional repository, these get applied to that centralized codebase and then they're deployed to the various instances that have made those requests using the configuration management system. So, this is a centralized service model. It's very similar to how we deliver other digital publishing services. At Scholars Portal, we host a number of uh of different services. We have a data repository called Borealis. We have a uh digital preservation service uh called perafrost. We also host uh scholars portal books and scholars portal journals uh as well as a geo scholar geo portal which is also a a geospatial repository. So we have quite a bit of experience although DSpace was was new for us when we got uh into developing Scolaris a few years ago. As the technical service provider a primary area focus for us is building infrastructure that is scalable, efficient, affordable and flexible designed to meet and respond to diverse repository scenarios and shared needs of Canadian institutions. And of course, Scolaris is more than just the the technical pieces. Building the strong uh building a strong community infrastructure is just as important. And this really continues to be a significant focus so that we can build a collaborative and dynamic service that's really attuned to the needs of our repository community here in Canada and also uh aligned with repository best practices, developments, and initiatives um as well as international sta uh standards and that's happening on a broader global scale. engaging with our repository community here in Canada as well as with the DSpace community and the broader repository community uh which we would include folks on the on the call here today. Um really getting to engage with this broader community helps us better understand uh what we can do from a a service perspective and then also uh what we can offer to Canadian institutional repositories and also to learn a bit about uh what those repository teams want from a shared service of this nature. So I mentioned that DSpace is sort of newer ground for us here at Scholars Portal. Um and we know that we're already stepping into an a thriving repository landscape. It's a very vibrant community and so our aim as we as we join this community is to look for ways where we can contribute to and leverage the really great uh work that's already happening within these networks and ideally we can make some contributions to those networks as well. So thinking about some new approaches or avenues that we can offer for knowledge sharing support and collaborative feature development. So this is a very uh simplified diagram of the Solaris service model uh in terms of hosting multiple instances. Uh DSpace doesn't have a multi-tenency model. So uh we're hosting parallel instances uh parallel instances of DSpace for each institution. So each institution here we have five different institutions. uh they have their own dedicated instance which we uh kind of colloially refer to as being powered by Solaris powered by the Solaris infrastructure. Scolaris provides technical and community infrastructure and support uh as we're hosting and managing each instance. It's uh maybe a kind of crucial point of distinction is that Solaris is a repository service but it's not a single or a centralized repository platform or a discovery layer. Although we are participating in conversations about what this could look like at the national level, this is something that's already uh also been identified in those feasibility studies I mentioned earlier that there is interest in having uh some centralized layer or hub where uh there can be an easy way to discover Canadian research. Uh so while we're not that discovery layer, we're participating in conversations about what that could look like and also looking at ways that we could leverage uh leverage existing cataloges or discovery services. The feasibility studies I mentioned earlier confirmed the need for a shared repository solution that would be scalable and responsive. And so the Solaris model really aims to offer flexibility for repository teams to tailor their instance to their own uh repository scenario and to meet the needs of their scholarly community. While we host and manage these parallel instances, local repository teams still maintain a great deal of autonomy and control over their particular instance. So we support uh many of the customizations and integrations that DSpace uh provides and we work with institutions to add the various ones that they want. Uh often that's things like including institutional branding, uh configuring DOI registration using the data site API, adding external authentication methods for login and making uh various customizations to submission forms depending on uh the requests from the institution. We don't make core code changes in the service model, but we document those requests and then we bring them to the broader uh DSpace community. Sometimes we'll make a ticket for it on GitHub or we'll participate in DSpace uh conversations that are happening, whether that's the DSpace community advisory team or the monthly developer meetings as we see more common needs emerge. Uh and I'll talk about an ETD needs assessment survey that we uh completed with the ETD expert group a little bit later because that definitely identified a number of common needs and and sort of pain points that we can look at. Um our goal as we uh go through the program is to uh dedicate more time to contributing code upstream so that more institutions not just ones that are scalar subscribers can also benefit from these improvements. Local repository teams maintain responsibility for overseeing the day-to-day operations of their own repositories and they continue to be the point of contact for their students, faculty and other researchers, providing uh local support and then administering their own policies and procedures. So we like to kind of describe Solaris as helping repository teams support their uh scholarly communities and recognizing the really valuable and crucial role that these local teams continue to play. Um this is really something that we uh we want to continue to provide support to those repository teams so that they can continue to do this really fantastic work. Okay, so I mentioned the early adopter program uh a little earlier. This is really one of the ways that we're starting to put together those technical and community pieces for Scolaris. So, it's a two-year cohort-based program. It's open to Canadian academic institutions of all sizes representing a wide range of repository use cases and migration scenarios. We're at the well, we're just over the halfway mark now and we currently have over 20 institutions that are participating in the program in phased migrations. The majority of these schools that we've onboarded are also live on their scalaris instance which is really uh exciting. It's been a very busy year. Lots of migrations from many platforms not just e-space but errare uh bress as well. So there's been a a a lot of learning that's happening and certainly we've had a really fantastic time working with all of the institutions who have joined us as we develop this service together. So some of the goals that are on the slide here are to uh migrate participating institutions to DSpace as I mentioned uh and through that process really understand what's needed to support Canadian IRS from a service perspective. Some of the expected outputs of the program are to establish efficient workflows for migration and ongoing service delivery. Clarifying what the Solaris offering includes. So sort of what's the outofbox Solaris offering versus what are uh available customizations or optional uh support identifying uh the required resources and responsibilities uh for um not just migration tasks but also ongoing uh service and then determining the pricing structure needed to operate this service on a cost recovery basis. By the end of the program next spring, we anticipate that Scolaris will be fully operational and ready to support broader adoption from more institutional repositories in Canada. And there are a number of ways that we engage with the community through this program. We host monthly community calls for early adopters. Uh we have working hours and special interest sessions. And all of these are designed as uh places for dialogue between schools and our Solaris service team as well as functioning as an avenue for schools to talk to each other to share feedback and help uh not just shape the development of the service but to also uh support each other and share best practices, workflows and resources. And we're really thrilled that that on these calls and and in these discussion channels, participants uh frequently share practical insights and local resources for man managing their own repositories. This generosity and support that's extended to fellow early adopters is really a shining example of the opportunities that exist for sharing resources and knowledge within a collaborative communitydriven service model uh that we're hoping to build uh with Solaris. We've also set up a number of communication channels to continue these conversations, provide service updates, and then also uh offer support as well. In addition to the early adopter program, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, there's the acronym CARL, uh has convened three expert groups to provide recommendations and guidance on key areas of repository management. So these are the expert groups that I hinted at in uh a little earlier on in the presentation. These groups are vital in identifying common use cases, developing practical strategies, prioritizing uh requirements for the service development and a whole lot more. They are very active. We are so impressed with their outputs. The opportunity for the Solaris team to collaborate with the expert groups has really brought critical perspective and expertise to our initiative, strengthening its direction and impact. These groups are coordinated by a visiting program officer for Carl uh the visiting program officer at Carl for Solaris and it's a a wonderful woman named Gabriella Marcia from the University of Calgary. She is fantastic. Uh so I wanted to give a little shout out uh shout out to Gabriella and the expert groups all also include representation from the scalaris team who serve as ex officio members on each of the groups. So on the side we have a little bit of information about each of the groups and then we'll talk more specifically about the ETD group and some of the work that they've done over the [clears throat] last year. So the first group is the Solaris metadata and discovery expert group. This group is focused on developing metadata strategies and recommendations to enhance the discoverability of repository content. This includes guidance on minimum viable metadata, multilingual metadata, metadata cleaning activities, uh pre and post migration, uh some information on persistent identifiers as well as taking a look at configurable entities which is a new feature introduced into the general dspace in version 7. They've been very busy. they have made a number of recommendations and published those. Uh you can find links to all of the outputs that have been published from the expert groups. Uh and maybe we can put a link in the chat again uh to I can probably drop it in here uh if you wanted to see a little bit more about uh some of the recommendations that uh I've mentioned from the metadata group and then also from the ET ET group. So that is the second group. The ETD group or SEG works on the migration and integration of electronic thesis and dissertations into the shared infrastructure as well as providing guidance, recommendations and advice on requirements and considerations related to ETBs. The last group is the Solaris Digital Preservation Expert Group or SDP. Uh it was established a little later on uh than the first two groups. uh and it was established to provide the Solera service team and community with guidance, recommendations and advice related to digital preservation planning requirements and pathways that would uh both support the longevity of Solaris as a service and ensure that the preservation offerings uh within the service reflect the preservation needs, priorities and capacity of member institutions. So the first two groups began uh in March of last year and the digital preservation group started last August. Each group consists of about 8 to 10 members from the Canadian Repository community who have generously contributed their time, expertise, and insights to the development of the service. These groups have made a significant impact in a pretty short time in just over a year. Uh and they've already released a number of recommendations uh which you can find. Uh there's a scolaris collection uh well and it makes sense at the University of Toronto's institutional repository which is called Tespace. So you'll find all of the published recommendations there as well as some information from our service team uh including a migration guide. But really our focus today is to share share uh to shine a light on some of the impressive work and findings from the ET ETD group or SEG. While the group's outputs are attuned to the scalaris context uh and designed to support subscribing institutions, we really hope that the guidance and insights shared by the group have broader relevance uh and will prove useful to the wider repository community. Okay. So, uh on this slide I'm just highlighting a few of the areas of focus based on the uh deliverables for the group. uh they've really been uh working through all of the many complexities that surround uh ETDs uh and some of the deliverables and areas of focus or conducting a needs assessment survey to learn more about the ETV lands uh management landscape in Canada uh to prepare uh some recommendations on uh requirements for harvesting ETDs into thesis Canada which is a uh thesis and dissertation harvesting program that's operated by the National Library and Archive here in Canada. Preparing recommendations specifically around non-traditional or non-extual thesis reviewing standards adherence and making recommendations. Summarizing uh ETD review workflows uh both in and outside of DSpace and then identifying best practices and relevant resources related to ETD management and migration of ETDs into the Scaleris service. So as the group uh started their work together, they determined uh they had all of these deliverables, but they uh kind of stepped back a little bit to uh determine that they really needed a deeper understanding of the current ETD landscape in Canadian institutional repositories in order to make meaningful recommendations that were grounded in practical realities. So the information gathering uh stage was was uh was really the first part of their work and one of the big ways that they did this was through a needs assessment survey. So the rest of this presentation will share uh the approach uh that the group took in preparing the survey and some of the key takeaways from these efforts. The aim of the survey was to ask members of the repository community in Canadian academic libraries about current perspectives and approaches taken for ETDs in their own IR. Responses from the survey informed other recommendations made by the group and assisted the service team in understanding the functional requirements for ETDs and the identified needs of the repository community related to these materials. So you can see some of the goals of the survey were to provide a snapshot of ETD management in Canadian IRS, identify some of the opportunities and perhaps pain points related to managing ETDs, identify functional requirements, what are some uh popular or desired features that would make ETD management a little more uh streamlined, and then identify areas for greater alignment across the repository community. and with that also identify areas of focus for the Solaris service team and and inform some of the other recommendations. So that survey was doing a lot of work as you can see from the goals here and we were really pleased with the responses that we uh that we got. So I will uh kick things off with a short introduction uh a short overview of how the survey was uh put together. So the survey was created in Google forms and then it was distributed through several channels. So we use various list serves. Uh we have a blog with this valeris service. Uh there is a scholarly communications mattermost channel uh or mattermost platform I guess uh which is an open source version of slack that uh is used quite a lot by the repository community here in Canada. And then we had some various other uh channels here at scholars portal that we used to send the survey out. So the survey was open for three weeks. Uh it ran from the end of October to mid November last year. Uh and we received 41 responses. So uh roughly threequarters were responses from English institutions and then the other uh quarter were from French institutions which was really nice to see uh that there was a good number of responses from French language institutions as well as they identified some of the multilingual uh needs in areas where there could be better support for uh managing ETDs and and other areas where there could be more multilingual support within the DSpace platform. We were also really pleased with the representation of responses across repository uh platforms. Uh the responses were sort of evenly split between uh institutions that were already part of the Scolaris early adopter program or planning to join and then also from non-scaleris institutions. And so it does uh track that we would see some representation from other repository platforms, not just DSpace. We had responses from uh repository teams that were uh on island errints bress fig share san and uh a few custom uh repository solutions. So this was really helpful as it gave us valuable points of comparison uh especially thinking about some of the ETD functionality that was in place for nondespace platforms particularly as some institutions are going to be joining the service from those platforms. It gives us a sense of what they might expect when they come over to DSpace and and maybe where DSpace might have certain features uh that their uh current platform may not have or uh or vice versa. Uh so really this also helped us uh identify and highlight what institutions like or don't like about their current systems and how DSpace compares to those platforms. also have a a small uh graph here showing that the responses were spread across uh CRKNB band. So the Canadian research knowledge network uh has a banding system that's used here in Canada to group member institutions for comparison and vendor pricing and it's based on uh a three different parameters. So looking at sponsored research, student enrollment or FTEES and then full-time faculty. So from the the graph uh we can take a look and see that we had uh most of the responses uh coming from mid to largesiz institutions but we still had a good number of responses from some of the uh smaller institutions as well. And this was one of the things that we also uh wanted uh when we developed the early adopter program was to work with institutions of various uh size, capacity, uh small and large repository teams is that gives us a kind of good overview of all of the different repository needs and we know that they vary depending on how much staff you have and and sort of what the involvement might be like from the grad studies office and the library team. So, we're really grateful to all of the uh members of the Canadian Repository who provided really thoughtful and detailed answers. There were about 20 questions to go through and there was an amazing amount of of feedback that we received with the survey. The input from uh from respondents gave us a a great deal of information to discuss and really directly inform the recommendations that we were able to make. So, here are some key takeaways from the survey. Something that really uh came across was that there is just so much variety in how institutions are managing ETBs uh particularly managing embargos. This came up quite a bit and we asked a number of questions particularly aimed at learning more about embargo management for ETBs. There isn't really a one-sizefits-all approach for how ETDs are managed uh in institutional repositories. And uh for folks that are joining the session, that may not be a surprise to you. wasn't necessarily a surprise to us, but it was really helpful to to see that laid out and sort of borne out from all of the different responses. The survey also revealed that that repository teams are using lots of different tools and processes to manage their ETVs and that this management is not just happening within the repository platform. So, some schools are using uh spreadsheets. They're using Excel. They're using uh forms that they've created. Some have developed uh have locally developed software or administrator tools. Some are using uh an ETD management software platform like ProQuest ETD admin or Virio. And then there are varying levels of integration of how those custom tools are custom tools or platforms then integrate with the repository. uh for example, ETD admin and DRA both integrate via sword. Uh but something like the spreadsheets or the forms, all of that is sort of happening outside the repository and there isn't necessarily a a sort of streamlined way to communicate the information on those spreadsheets and have that uh be reflected within the repository platform. And uh more than just the tools, there are often many different stakeholders that are involved in the ETD workflow at various stages. Some work happens within the graduate studies offices, some within the library and in some cases central uh central IT is also involved. Uh so there are a lot of actors involved in ETD management, maybe a lot of cooks in the ETD kitchen. Um and the role that each group play uh plays tended to vary across uh cross respondents uh to the survey. So for example, some repository repository teams are doing significant metadata curation or remediation for ETVs while at other institutions most of this activity is happening in the graduate studies office and the ETVS are then uh coming to the coming to the library staff and the repository team in batches that are then just uh ingested into the IR. We also saw that there was great variety in levels of complexity regarding embargos and how they are applied and where they are applied. Sometimes this was happening outside of the repository. Uh so in some cases ETDs are just kept ETDs that have an embargo applied to them are kept elsewhere. They're not even put into the repository until the uh lift date passes and then they go through uh the process to be uh deposited. [snorts] Whereas other uh other respondents indicated that they are using the embargo functionality of their uh respective repository software. The level at which embargos are applied also varied. Uh some uh repository teams apply embargos just to the files themselves while others prefer to restrict the entire item. With that level of complexity and granularity, it makes sense that uh there was a strong desire for better embargo functionality uh within repository software. Uh this came through a number of times in the survey and that uh included requests to make it easier to manage different types of embargo requests. Um in DSpace you have to do that with resource policies instead of um adding embargo in the metadata. You can add embargo information in the metadata, but it won't convert into a resource policy unless you've uh you've explicitly assigned a policy. Uh and speaking on behalf of uh the Scalera service team and managing a number of migrations from non-despace platforms, that sort of separation between embargo information and metadata and embargo information in something called resource policies in DSpace terminology uh can take a little bit of time to kind of wrap wrap your head around. It's not always easy to know how to apply a a resource policy. There are a lot of different files that might be attached to a single item. And so it's also uh can be sort of uh challenging to understand how DSpace manages embargos and how to also then show others on the library team how to do that uh management. Some of the other uh requests were to make it easier to identify which items have embargos and when those embargos are going to lift, making that information available not just to repository staff but making it visible uh visible in the interface as well for end users and then finding ways as well to automate embargo processes and tracking. So respondents uh also asked for custom date ranges for example automatically lifting embargos after a set period say after one year or after two year instead of a specific date. Uh many of these feature uh requests were uh coming from institutions that either were migrating to DSpace or were already on DSpace and we know that there are some pain points around embargo management with that platform. Uh we also know there's some improvements coming in future releases uh like adding the embargo date on the simple item page. Uh so this feedback was really helpful uh to get a sense of what to prioritize in terms of uh in terms of uh upgrades and also uh what we could uh present to the DSpace community in terms of uh more improvements that uh would be beneficial to a greater number of institutions. Lastly, another uh key takeaway here on the slide was the uh was the sort of balance or tension between uh making recommendations or or requirements around format restrictions. About half of the schools require certain formats uh for ETPs uh or restrict what types of formats can be deposited while the other half make recommendations or indicate preferences but they do not limit with which formats are accepted. It can also be a challenge to be be that restrictive around file formats when the platform itself does not impose those restrictions. Uh so we heard from some uh respondents that their software allowed them to restrict what types of formats could be deposited. But in DSpace you really can deposit any file format even if it's known by the system or not. The only limitation is often through the interface the file size. Some respondents spoke to this uh in their in their survey responses saying that even with their best efforts, some unknown or inaccessible uh files will sneak through and get deposited. So, it requires a little bit more uh content curation on the repository team when you can't make a restriction around requiring just PDF or PDFA for example. So I I talked about uh some of the uh information we learned about embargos. This is a very uh cursory uh chart here to show uh what kind of emerged from the survey. Uh when uh when repository teams were managing embargos within their repository, file level embargos tended to be the most common, but there were also significant group of teams that also applied embargos at the item level. In some cases, the application of a file or item level embargo will depend on the type of item or the collection. In DSpace, you can uh apply a file uh you can apply an embargo on any of the files or at the item level. Uh but for other repository software, you may not have that level of granularity. We also asked in the survey where ETDs from Canadian IRS were being harvested. So where they were uh uh where institutions were focused on making their ETVs discoverable. Library and Archives Canada which operates the thesis Canada harvesting program was the over overwhelming uh top answer from our uh survey respondents with some repository team saying that they uh already had their ETDs harvested there while others were planning to set this up uh and potentially this was part of what they were looking to do when they migrated to Solaris. Thesis Canada is a collaborative program between uh Library and Archives Canada and Canadian universities. And the program strives to acquire, preserve, and provide access to thesis and dissertations published at Canadian universities by harvesting ETDs using the OI PMH protocol. After LAC harvesting, ProQuest, Open Air, uh and a various number of library cataloges were also mentioned uh by respondents. uh and most of those again are using the OI PMH protocol. We also asked uh what are some of the biggest challenges related to ETDs in IRS? Uh and there are a number of them on the on the uh slide here. Uh some folks uh mentioned uh challenges with balancing rights around copyright CC licenses with institutional policies that require open access to ETDs. Uh we heard some of the challenges with uh managing and providing guidance on various uh formats as well as uh not just file formats uh not just file format uh recommendations but also looking at uh providing access to formats that were suitable for preservation as well as how to uh sort of uh approach non-extual ETDs uh and perhaps their supplementary files as well and to think about uh how you would enter a non-extual ET ETD and all of these other uh elements that uh how to structure an item for a non-extual ETD. We heard a little bit about some of the challenges with managing uh restrictions and permissions. Uh some challenges with discovery. So how to surface relationships between uh various files. This was something that came up with the non-extual ETDs in particular. Uh also supporting discovery for those types of materials. looking at some challenges related to accessibility or non-compliance with accessibility standards. Managing disperate requirements for metadata that may be coming from grad studies or the or the library cataloging team. Uh issues with managing multiple authorship. Establishing and maintaining stable links to supplemental data that might be stored externally, say a data set in a data repository, as well as managing persistent identifiers. response uh respondents also indicated that staffing capacity to provide mediated deposit or support for self self- deposits uh was often a challenge. Even ensuring that all of the ETDs were deposited into the repository meant that there was uh some considerable work uh in terms of uh management from the grad studies office as well as the library team. There were uh there were also some challenges related to the lack of standardizer best practices for metadata and then also keeping up to date with uh various open access trends and IR best practices and managing interdep departmental workflows when there are these various uh uh various stakeholders involved in management of ETDs. There are some desired features that came out of the survey as well. So, uh, being able to set up review workflows for content. Uh, DSpace already has this functionality as well as batch editing and uploading options, which are really popular and and have helped, uh, quite a bit with ETD management, particularly during busy convocation periods. The ability to automatically register DOIs which DSpace has via the use of the data site API was also a popular feature and we started working with a number of schools who are starting to assign DOIs uh for their ETDs which is an added benefit for students uh and also makes a good deal of sense because this type of content is often unique to the institutional repository and so that articles or thesis is unlikely to receive a DOI elsewhere say from a publisher. We also heard some opportunities for ETDs uh and sort of more broadly within the community that there were uh some really exciting opportunities particularly around developing a shared service to collaborate more on sharing best practices and have conversations about how we could collectively improve discovery of ETDs, adopt metadata standards, uh look at uh standardized submission forms for ETDs across repositories again supporting uh interoperability and discovery of those ETDs downstream. and then looking at uh some best practices for deposit workflows and standard uh sort of standard methods of uh depositing ETDs into the repository. There's a clear need uh from respondents to that there was interest in seeing what other institutions are doing and what's working best for them. So the ETD uh group really uh found a lot of value from the survey responses and and that really helped inform uh a number of uh the deliverables that I mentioned earlier. So uh recommendations uh metadata recommendations for compliance uh with ETDs being harvested in the thesis Canada program recommendations specifically looking at non-traditional or non-extual ETDs. uh that includes describing some of the challenges that came through in the survey, [clears throat] flagging some limitations related to non-traditional thesis and then outlining some preservation considerations and special requirements. Uh and this group, this subgroup is also making recommendations to the broader repository community as well as the Solaris service team. So those uh recommendations are about to go out to the community for feedback and I think uh they will be very uh very much appreciated uh based on what we heard from the survey. The group is also uh using responses from the survey to identify different workflows. We asked for workflow diagrams and we received a few of them from uh some of the institutions. So that's helping us sort of map out some ways to bring content uh into the repository. And then building off of the success of the ETD survey and the high response rate, the digital preservation group also undertook their own survey that went out earlier this spring, which uh built off of some of the responses uh from the needs assessment survey that the ETD group did uh but dug into some of the questions in more detail. So the goal with the preservation survey was to look uh similarly to the ETD one uh provide a snapshot of digital preservation in the Canadian repository content uh surface where repository teams need guidance and support and then identify some areas of work for the group. Uh and we know that uh preservation is also very much connected to uh long-term access to ETDs. So it's nice to see that these uh these groups are also building off of uh off of the work that they are doing within their group and then uh collaborating together. The responses have also uh have also informed a number of uh work items for our service team. We've learned a great deal from the ETD survey. Uh this feedback really helped us prioritize how we can provide support to institutions. So for example uh now during the migration and onboarding of of repository teams we offer a separate session to specifically go through how to manage workflows in DSpace and how to assign embargos within the interface. We've also hosted community calls on ETD related topics that came up most in the survey. So we had guests from LAC as well as another uh harvesting program in Canada called uh Aerody. And then next month we're welcoming folks uh that uh developed the VIO ETD management software. So it's really nice to to get to uh respond to what we heard from the survey and and to uh tailor our service our service delivery to meet those needs. We also uh identified some platform improvements that came out from the survey. So, we've kind of kept a running wish list of feature requests that have come up uh either through the survey uh or through our our regular check-in calls with subscribers and early adopters. And this survey really helped give us a wider base of representation so that we can advocate for improvements to the DSpace community and and we're not just saying there's one institution that was interested in this. we can now kind of have even more of a of a collective pitch to say that we've heard from 40% of respondents in the survey that this is a feature that they'd like to see. We have over 20 schools that would would love if it was easier to manage embargos than the DSpace platform. So looking ahead uh we know that ETDs and ETD management and IRS is not static. There is a lot uh of ongoing work that is happening not just in the Canadian repository community. This symposium is a great example of all the really fantastic work that that everyone in the community is doing to make ETDs more discoverable and usable. So I highlighted some areas that we're looking to focus on here. Um, one of the one of uh maybe I'll highlight one of uh these here as we're coming to time is that uh we we are going to be contributing the ETDMS crosswalk and namespace to DSpace. We've assigned oursel this ticket here at scholars portal. This was a recommendation that that has come from the ETD expert group as well as the metadata group. uh it's currently not a default registry in DSpace and so you need to add the thesis namespace or ETDMS namespace manually on a per instance basis. We've also committed to update the crosswalk so that thesis specific metadata can be pulled in and discoverable upstream. both recommendations or sorry both improvements that will make it easier to take the recommended approach of using the ETDMS standard which is created by our lovely conference host NDLTD or Noodle TD maybe Ed was um using so we're really uh we're really looking forward to be able to contribute that to the DSpace community uh we're looking at uh the standard ETD submission form so the metadata and discovery group is going to be looking at this in their second uh year of their term. We're also looking at uh some opportunities to put documentation together on recommended workflows. So, putting some documentation together on how to use uh different packaging tools uh like staff builder and staff creator to bundle ETDs and bring them into the repository uh as well as uh also uh using consistent metadata. So all of the expert groups are looking at metadata in some capacity and so uh looking for areas to align those recommendations uh in the submission form is one way that we can uh help standardize metadata for greater discovery of ETDs. We also are uh recommending that there's uh when we do when we uh onboard institutions, we're also sort of um recommending involvement of grad uh graduate studies staff uh both uh in migration teams and in uh the repository community of practice. So we started recommending their participation when we on board institutions and then we also have representation from uh some grad studies uh uh some uh grad uh studies staff on the ETD expert group for the second year. So it's great to have that perspective as well. So we're quite busy. There's always lots to talk about. I feel like these presentations go by very fast. Um, but before we go, I wanted to highlight and thank the members of the SE tech group, which are uh who are all listed on this slide. We really couldn't do this work without these really lovely, incredible folks who've contributed their time and expertise to build a bright future for showcasing Canadian scholarship, including ETDs. Uh, and to provide the benefits of their insights not only to Scaler subscribers, but to the broader repository community and their researcher publiclix. I would particularly like to thank Pascal Kolarco from the University of Windsor uh who is my fellow needs assessment subgroup member who co-developed the survey and analyzed the responses. If you have any questions about Solaris or you'd like to learn more about the uh fantastic work of the SEG group, we would love to hear from you either during the symposium. We have a few minutes for chat maybe. Um, but if uh it's not during uh during this session, we encourage you to get in touch by emailing info@scolaris.ca. >> Well, thank you so much, Julia. That was very enlightening. And I will tell you, having been in this business for almost 30 years, well, yeah, pretty much 30 years now, um the Canadian thesis ethesis system has always been the envy of myself and our my colleagues in the United States. I think [clears throat] maybe we'd never get there in the United States. You'd be like hurting cats. But looking at the endeavor of you having to deal with so many different institutions, doing so many different platforms, and then integrating that into your national repository on a DSpace environment is truly amazing. Thank you so much for for sharing all that information. So I'd like to ask the audience if we have another minute or so, two minutes. Um yeah, somebody says, "Cats on catnip." I understand. Um, so any comments, questions or concerns for u Julia? Please raise your hand or uh type something in the chat. We'll give folks a moment here to gather their thoughts. Dr. Fox, did you have anything to offer? Um just a question whether Julia knows of other groups that have taken a similar approach and are serving a community of of practice in some other region elsewhere. >> Well, we are always inspired by the folks from the Texas Digital Library. Uh I know that they have they had done a a survey to their members on I think embargo policies. They did had a poster at open repositories this summer and they they are always sort of our inspiration in terms of the documentation and the community that they have developed. They've been around probably 20 years I would say. So we're just getting started but it is really nice. uh they've always been very uh warm and welcoming in in sharing their documentation. And um as we kind of go through and and um have more clarity on on what is all involved in the in the service and and our documentation, we definitely want to contribute more of that uh more of that back as well. >> Great. Thank you, Julia. Um anyone else for the good of the order? We are at the witching hour here. So I would encourage you to stay in touch with Julia. Julia stay in touch with us is a wonderful enlightening presentation. Um thank you so much. Um I'm going to usher us into the final segment of the day and of the conference. Um we're going to have a um a closing session involving our ED leadership award uh ceremony and um the future directions. We have an official announcements to make. So, um, we're going to shut down this room momentarily and, uh, so if you're here, you'll get sent over to the other room or just join me and navigate over to the main Zoom room. Thank you so much, Julia. And please, everyone, help me to thank Julia.