The Metadata Services Department will no longer be assigning call numbers to electronic dissertations, effective immediately. We will also clean up retrospectively the trickle of electronic dissertations that have gone through the pipeline. By extension, when and if we ever receive electronic theses, they also will not be assigned call numbers.
Print dissertations and theses will continue to have call numbers assigned; no change there. Stacks copies must still, after all, be shelved.
This decision was reached following a call for input in March. We were faced with a conundrum: having call numbers in suppressed item records was useless, as those call numbers were not indexed and thus are not retrievable. Having the item records display would need to happen for all electronic resources (not just dissertations) and staff felt strongly that this was very confusing to users.
After consulting broadly, the admin team determined that UCSD needed to continue to suppress item records and abandon the use of call numbers for electronic dissertations. For efficiency (and so fewer mistakes creep in) we need to do this across the board, for all disciplines and branches.
If you'd like to see what this looks like in Roger, here is an example of an electronic dissertation (and one which has no paper backup in the UCSD archives):
Discovery and analysis of mosaic arrangements in biological sequences and structures [electronic resource] / by Degui Zhi
You will notice that we now are able to include the abstract in the bibliographic record because of the electronic workflow.
To find UCSD's electronic dissertations, use the subject heading "Dissertations, Academic-UCSD-[discipline]" which will retrieve both formats--print and electronic--and includes both dissertations and theses. Using the Electronic Resources scope, or limiting a search to electronic resources are also useful techniques.
Please contact me if I can answer any questions. -- Linda
Email from Linda Barnhart to Metadata Services Dept. Staff and Public Services Staff
June 27, 2006