Metadata assessment in e-theses and dissertations of Canadian institutional repositories

From the abstract: The aim of this study is to assess the metadata element sets of electronic theses and dissertations that are currently used at Canadian academic institutional repositories, and to discuss issues related to variations and inconsistencies in Dublin Core data used by participating repositories. The formats and usage patterns of metadata elements at ten participating institutional repositories are identified and analyzed. Additionally, metadata element variations are grouped by different types. Current metadata elements have a significant level of inconsistency and variation....The result of this study may be beneficial to the achievement of interoperability across institutional repositories and to the development of a standardized application profile for Canadian institutional repositories.