Metadata Enhancements

Retroactive population of Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETD) Supervisor metadata

As of May 2021, the names of Co/Supervisors are captured in cIRcle’s electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) metadata, providing helpful discovery and access points and further connecting these valuable university outputs. In 2024, cIRcle began efforts to retroactively populate this field for approximately 4,600 records submitted to cIRcle prior to field implementation.  Initial work for this project has been completed, which involved collaboration with Library Staff across units to retrieve identified items and record Co/Supervisor names. cIRcle is now exploring work to ensure names are captured in a consistent form, followed by population into the cIRcle record metadata.

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETD) Subject Headings Analysis

In 2021, cIRcle undertook an analysis of subject headings of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) to identify the extent of Subject Keywords containing outdated, inappropriate, or problematic terminology as it pertains to Indigenous peoples, communities, and cultures. The initial phase of the project addressed ETDs created prior to 2008 (known at UBC as Retrospective ETDs) and was completed in 2022. Phase two of the project addressed the remainder of affected ETDs created after 2008 and was completed in Summer 2023. 

Read more about this project: Inclusive Metadata: Legacy Subject Keywords in Theses & Dissertations at cIRcle

Author Name Management

In 2021, cIRcle investigated author name management practices for the UBC Faculty collection, with the goal of disambiguating and reconciling name variants found within the collection. Initial explorations into sustainable workflows included the use of OpenRefine for data cleaning, Library of Congress (LC) Name Authorities and UBC departmental pages for author identification, and Google Sheets for collaborative identification of author names needing disambiguating and/or reconciling. This work is an on-going project for cIRcle.

Read more about this initiative: Author Name Management in cIRcle

Outreach and Content Recruitment

Electronic Thesis And Dissertations (ETD) Supervisor Recruitment

The ETD Supervisor Recruitment project aims to aims to deposit research articles authored by faculty supervisors of recent theses and dissertations at UBC Vancouver. This work leverages recent cIRcle metadata initiatives to include supervisor metadata in ETD item records and to perform name authority on faculty names to enhance discovery.

COVID-19 Research Content Recruitment

The cIRcle COVID-19 Research Content Recruitment project aims to provide permanent open access to UBC-authored COVID-19 research that might otherwise remain inaccessible to the public. Now in its fourth year, this project has resulted in more than 170 research articles being added to cIRcle.

Read more about this initiative: The cIRcle COVID-19 Research Content Recruitment Project