International Archives Day
Subject: Multidisciplinary
9 June is International Archives Day, sponsored by the International Council on Archives (ICA). Within the context of our University, archival documents comprise legal, regulatory and information evidence and make up the University's documentary heritage.
On the occasion of this Day, we have spoken with Jesús Sánchez, head of the Archives and Document Management Service, Cristina Magrinyà, who also works in the Archives Service, and Pepi Capdevila, from Library Services Development, who will tell us about the specific work performed by the UOC Library and the Archives Service in the doctoral thesis curation project.
Jesús Sánchez is keen to highlight "the importance of this first cooperation project between the Library and Archives in creating synergies and a collaborative environment".
Curation of doctoral theses
"As its part of this project, the Library takes care of the administrative processes involved in publishing the theses". Pursuant to the regulations governing doctoral education and, as doctoral theses must be deposited in electronic format, it is provided that "the Library assists doctoral students in publishing their doctoral theses in open access and files all the defended doctoral theses in the institutional repository, O2, the cooperative thesis repository, TDX, and the TESEO database", Capdevila explains.
In addition, the doctoral programme secretary's office forwards a printed copy of the thesis to the Library. The Library registers the thesis in the UOC's catalogue in accordance with RDA (resource description and access) rules and prepares transfer to the UOC Archives' repository to preserve the author's work. "This is how the cooperation process between the Library and the Archives has started", remarks Capdevila.
The Archives receive physical transfer of the thesis, identify it and file it permanently in the historic repository. Before that, it goes through a standard classification and description process in accordance with the ISAD (G) standard in the Mol·lècula archive management software. "As well as being scientific knowledge, the theses are legal evidence and the rules of curation are applied to them", Magrinyà explains.
One of this project's goals is "to enable the UOC community and the general public to access and consult the theses. This is indispensable, particularly in the case of the theses that, for whatever reason, do not have a digital copy in the O2", Magrinyà observes.
"For the UOC, the doctoral theses are one of the first documents to be included in the historic archive and are vitally important for explaining the UOC's historic memory and its function in society", concludes Sánchez.
