Designing an Honors Thesis Deposit Workflow: Balancing Student Agency, Metadata Quality, and Library Capacity

Designing an Honors Thesis Deposit Workflow: Balancing Student Agency, Metadata Quality, and Library Capacity

This presentation describes the development of a three-stage honors thesis deposit workflow at a small liberal arts institution, guiding students through manuscript preparation, metadata creation, and submission. By involving students in the creation of keywords and other metadata, the workflow promotes ownership of their scholarly work while enhancing discoverability in institutional repositories and archives. The presentation will discuss the benefits of this approach, including improved metadata quality and reduced staff workload, particularly in libraries with limited staffing and cataloging resources.

Wang, Evie

2026-04-24

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Text; Document; Presentation

This presentation outlines the development of a three-stage honors thesis deposit workflow implemented at a small liberal arts institution: preparing the manuscript, preparing metadata, and submitting materials. Although an honors thesis is not a formal scholarly publication in the traditional peer-reviewed sense, the library encourages students to approach their works as such. Students are guided in preparing their manuscripts with careful attention to formatting and in contributing metadata, including keywords. The library maintains oversight of ingestion for both the digital depository and physical archives. Empowering students to supply keywords not only enriches metadata quality but also fosters a sense of ownership over their work. At the same time, this approach alleviates the burden on library staff, particularly in small institutions where staffing is limited and cataloging expertise may vary.

2026-04-24

2026-04-24

Wang, Evie