Lifecycle and Requirements for Digital Collection Management of Thai Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This research was aimed at studying the situation, problems, and requirements for digital collection lifecycle management of Thai theses and dissertations. The mixed research method used was composed of: (1) Study of the problem and situation in which the qualitative method was applied. The research site covered 10 higher education institutions where the Thailand Digital Collection (TDC) project is operated. The informants were key administrative officers of the TDC project of each institution. In-depth and structured interviews were conducted on an individual basis to obtain the most accurate answers. (2) Study of requirements based on the quantitative research method to survey the requirements for the digital collection management system for Thai theses and dissertations from 84 purposively-selected TDC project officers and 527 end users selected by accidental sampling, totaling 611 samples. Research findings are as follow: (1) The study of the situation and problems of digital collection lifecycle management shows that Thai higher institutions systematically manage their digital collection. The management lifecycle is consistent with the Guidance documents for lifecycle management of ETDs, which included seven steps: program planning, creation, submission, and ingestion, access and retrieval of digital objects, archiving and preservation, evaluation and assessment, inter-operation (creation of institutional collaboration), and development of link data. (2) The study of requirements for digital collection management of Thai theses and dissertations shows five system requirements: acquisition and gathering, digitization, metadata standards, management of rights, and storage and retrieval, all of which are at M (mandatory) and D (desirable) levels.