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Monday, August 13, 2007

More on the OA portal of European ETDs

Maurice P.J.P Vanderfeesten and Gerard van Westrienen, A Portal For Doctoral E-Theses in Europe:  Lessons Learned from a Demonstrator Project, SURF Foundation, July 2007.

Abstract:   For the first time various repositories with doctoral e-theses have been harvested on an international scale. This report describes a small pilot project which tested the interoperability of repositories for e-theses and has set up a freely accessible European portal with over 10,000 doctoral e-theses1. Five repositories from five different countries in Europe were involved: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) was the common protocol used to test the interoperability. Based upon earlier experiences and developed tools (harvester, search engine) of the national DAREnet service in the Netherlands, SURFfoundation could establish a prototype for this European e-theses Demonstrator relatively fast and simple.