Submitting online dissertations and post-doctoral theses to the German National Library - Step-by-step guide

1. Submitting online disseratations and post-doctoral theses

The submission is made by the relevant university library specified in the doctorate regulations. On request, the deposit department of the German National Library will issue an email with an ID number.
erwerb-onl-hs-f@d-nb.de (information on notification procedure, Frankfurt am Main)
erwerb-onl-hs-l@d-nb.de (information on notification procedure, Leipzig)

2. Common metadata standard

The use and further processing of metadata require that all institutions involved use a common metadata standard. The metadata format for online dissertations XMetaDiss is based on the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. It was developed by the German National Library and harmonised with the library alliances and the university libraries. XMetaDiss also allows person-related data to be entered; this is incorporated in the Personennamendatei (PND; Name Authority File). The submission of personal metadata is voluntary and requires the agreement of the publication's author.

3. Transfer of metadata

It is important for the authors of online dissertations to create metadata for the documents and to send this to the German National Library. In response to the wishes of the university libraries, the metadata interface facilitates a variety of transfer possibilities. There are three basic types of transfer:

• an OAI-DataProvider interface which supports XMetaDiss. The structured metadata is harvested by the German National Library.
• an interactive notification form (available only in German) on the Web-server of the German National Library which supports the capture of metadata using the agreed standard XMetaDiss. The structured data is fed back to the applicant as soon as it has been recorded.
  The author notification form (available only in German) is used for reporting personal data without a document.
• an e-Mail to the German National Library informing, in agreed form, of the existence of a freely accessible "metadata carrier" which contains metadata compliant with the XMetaDiss standard. During the transition period, the old MetaDiss (available only in German) standard can still be used for notification by email.

4. Uniform Resource Name (URN)

In order to ensure the long-term accessibility of electronic resources the German National Library set up a service for issuing and managing Persistent Identifiers in September 2001. This makes electronic documents to be referenced and accessible even if the URL changes. All university publications are therefore given a URN.

5. Transfer of the publication to the German National Library

The documents must be presented for collection in a preferred file format specified by the German National Library. There is a standard for the transfer of multiple file documents (container model; available only in German) to guarantee the integrity of documents consisting of a number of individual files.

6. Registering and archiving

Once a copy of the document has been transferred to the archive server, a virus check is made and an MD5 hashcode calculated. This permits the identification of document copies in relation to the archived reference version. The German National Library has set up a deposit system for online dissertations. Long-term preservation is ensured by the use of various securing techniques.

Comprehensive instructions on submission of online dissertations and post-doctoral theses (available only in German)
Metadata standard XMetaDiss (XML)
Metadata standard MetaDiss/MetaPers (available only in German)
Technical specifications regarding data structure and syntax (available only in German)