ETD+ Toolkit

ETD+ Toolkit. Dr. Katherine Skinner, et al. Educopia Institute. April 10, 2017.
     Very helpful website for dealing with ETDs. The Toolkit is an open set of six modules to help students create, store, and maintain their research outputs. It was designed to:

• Help administrators understand the digital research outputs students are creating
• Help administrators assess what to collect and care for as part of the institutional memory
• Help students make sure that research outputs are in durable formats and on durable devices;
• Help students make informed decisions about file formats, documentation, and rights.

The Modules, which include "Learning Objectives, a one-page Handout, a Guidance Brief, a Slideshow with full presenter notes, and an evaluation Survey", are:

1. Copyright: How can students gain appropriate permissions and how can students signal copyright for their own works?
2. Data Organization: How can students structure, describe, store, and deposit data and other research files for reuse and/or future access?
3. File Formats: How will the formats students choose make future access to their research easier or more difficult?
4. Metadata: How can students store information describing their files to make sure they can tell what they are in the future?
5. Storage: How can students make well informed choices about where to store their research materials?
6. Version Control: What mechanisms can students use to make it easier to see the history of a file with multiple versions?

"In a 2014 survey of nearly 800 students across nine universities, students reported that non-PDF files - including research data, video, digital art, and software code - are either as important or more important than the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) PDF as research outputs and evidence. Fully 80% of these students are producing non-PDF research outputs, most commonly tabular data (43%), digital images (38%), software code (29%), and digital text (28%)."
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The ETD+ Toolkit provides introductory training for data curation and digital longevity techniques. It helps students identify and offset risks and threats to their digital research.

Digital Preservation Matters.