The development of the China Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

The importance of electronic theses and dissertations and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations has been widely realized by Chinese academic libraries in recent years. This paper introduces the China Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations project initiated by the China Academic Library and Information System and current research into related technologies, including metadata standards, OAI metadata harvesting protocol, standard document format and intellectual property protection. Research work on multilingual and cross‐lingual searching, personalization and knowledge organization is also described. The goals of the China Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations are to establish electronic theses and dissertations collections for Chinese academic universities, to provide services to access them efficiently, and to ensure the seamless organization of distributed electronic theses and dissertations collections.