Data Management

A 2025 Retrospective on the DRS: Celebrating this past year and looking ahead to the future

The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a dynamic place that showcases the variety of projects and scholarly work completed by members of the Northeastern community. Every year, new material is added to the DRS, including theses and dissertations, datasets, presentations, photographs, archival collections, and more. To conclude our series of blog posts celebrating 10 years of the DRS, I thought it would be fun to look back at this past year.

First, some statistics! In 2025…

Next, I wanted to put a spotlight on some work completed this past year. This blog post focuses on projects related to Digital Production Services (DPS), the department I’m a part of.1 DPS is responsible for the day-to-day management and upkeep of the DRS.2 Our work this year involved collaborating with different groups, departments, and people across the university, adding new collections and files to the DRS and completing metadata updates to existing collections, among other things.

Collaboration across the university…

  • Mills College Art Museum (MCAM): Collection images and exhibition catalogs from the museum were added to the DRS. MCAM, located in Oakland, was founded in 1925 and its collections include over 12,000 objects. Highlights include Californian and Asian ceramics and important works by prominent women artists. To learn more about the museum, visit their website.
  • Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ): Cataloging work continued this year, and new items were added. This project showcases collaboration between many different people at Northeastern, including the School of Law, Archives and Special Collections, the Digital Scholarship Group, and DPS. To learn more about the work of the CRRJ, visit their website. Read more about this work in blog posts written by Archives Assistants Stephanie Bennett Rahmat and Annie Ross.
  • Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs): Every year, new theses and dissertations showcasing the breadth and depth of scholarship at Northeastern are added to the DRS. In 2025, 577 were added. To break this down by college:
    • College of Professional Studies: 175
    • College of Engineering: 154
    • College of Science: 71
    • Bouvé College of Health Sciences: 70
    • Khoury College of Computer Science: 57
    • College of Social Sciences and Humanities: 34
    • College of Arts, Media, and Design: 16
  • New collaborations: DPS worked on projects with the Center for Contemporary Music and the American Sign Language & Interpreting Program.
Painting of a person standing in a field of flowers
Dahlias and Butterflies, a painting by Anne Bremer from the Mills College Art Museum collection. https://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20799838  

Work related to the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections…

Newspaper page with the headline "They call the whiz Mariah." A photo of Mariah Carey accompanies the article
An example of a tear sheet from the Larry Katz Collection: a newspaper article written by Katz from the Boston Herald about Mariah Carey. https://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20775370

On the horizon…

I wanted to wrap up this post by previewing the collections, projects, and collaborations for the DRS in 2026.

Work has started on the digitization and description of collections related to Elma Lewis, founder of the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts (1950), the National Center of Afro-American Artists (1968), and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (1969). Through these institutions, she shaped and influenced Black art, artists, and performers in Boston and beyond. This work is made possible by a Community Preservation Art grant from the City of Boston. To learn more about this work, read the blog post written by Giordana Mecagni, Head of NUASC, and Molly Brown, Reference and Outreach Librarian.

Metadata updates are currently in progress for the WFNX Collection, which mainly consists of clips and episodes from The Sandbox, a beloved morning radio program that aired on WFNX, a radio station broadcasting in the Greater Boston area from 1982-2012. These updates are expected to be completed early this year.

Planning has begun for DRS v2. There are many improvements planned for behind the scenes and changes that will impact how users interact with the DRS. We’re excited to get the ball rolling and sharing more about this work in the future.

It’s an amazing accomplishment to reach 10 years, and a testament to the passion and dedication of the Northeastern community. We look forward to the next 10 years, which will bring new challenges, collections, opportunities, and collaborations.3

If you’re interested in depositing your materials to the DRS, or working or collaborating with DPS, please email library-DPS@northeastern.edu — we’d love to hear from you! To read more about DPS services, visit our departmental directory.

Footnotes:

  1. There are so many different communities, groups, and people that work on and contribute to the DRS. This blog post is only able to capture a snapshot of all that goes on. ↩︎
  2. Many library staff members work alongside DPS to support the DRS. To learn more about the people behind the DRS and the DRS itself, read What is the DRS and who is it for? by Sarah Sweeney, Head of Digital Production Services. ↩︎
  3. A big thank you to my colleagues in DPS (Sarah Sweeney, Drew Facklam, and Kim Kennedy) and NUASC (Molly Brown) for their help and feedback, which contributed greatly to this post. ↩︎

DRS Reaches 500,000 Uploads

The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is now home to more than half a million files! We don’t know exactly which newly uploaded file was the 500,000th to be added to the system, but it was likely a digitized image from the Mills College Art Museum — possibly one of the etchings by Stefano della Bella, Jan Georg van Vliet, or Theodorus van Kessel.

Etching illustration of a horse walking with a large pack on its back
This etching on paper by Italian draughtsman and printmaker Stefano della Bella is likely to have been one of the works that brought the DRS to its 500,000th upload.

This milestone comes as the library celebrates a decade of supporting the DRS as a service for the university community. In those 10 years, a few files have emerged as the most popular, seeing consistent traffic year after year, including:

Photo of a man with messy hair and a smile, holding his hands apart, with the words "Boston Fans"
This “Ancient Aliens” meme from the One Marathon collection is the most viewed file in the DRS.

Learn more about the DRS and its collections in our series celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Capturing Scholarship: Electronic Theses and Dissertations in the DRS

Northeastern’s electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) provide a valuable record of the university’s scholarly contributions, capturing the evolution of research across numerous academic disciplines over the past two decades. The Digital Repository Service (DRS) preserves all ETDs from 2008 onward, along with selected earlier works, creating a collection of more than 7,500 items spanning over 30 departments and nearly 70 academic programs.

As some of the DRS’ most frequently accessed materials, ETDs offer rich insights into the university’s academic history and digital presence. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the DRS, Digital Production Services (DPS) — the department responsible for managing both the DRS and ETDs — set out to share insights into how theses and dissertations are added to the repository and how Northeastern’s ETD collections have evolved over time.

ETD Creation to DRS Ingest: Process Overview

The ETDs are initially submitted to ProQuest by graduate students as a condition of their graduation. The rules for the submission package and document organization are determined by each program. Once the submission is completed and the student fills out information about their ETD, the file and metadata are sent in via a zip file to a library server. Over the last 5+ years, a local workflow has been developed to:

  1. Export the files and move backups to other networked drives
  2. Record submissions in a spreadsheet to ensure file provenance
  3. Document any additional information, such as embargo dates or original file names, in case there are issues with the submission
  4. Review, normalize, and transform the existing ProQuest metadata to create DRS-compliant records for each file
  5. Add degree, school, and department information to each record to support the DRS collection structure
  6. Ingest the ETDs into their corresponding collections in the DRS
  7. Generate digital object identifiers (DOIs) for each ETD
  8. Conduct name authority control on all advisor and committee member names
Screenshot of the DRS with the heading Theses and Dissertations, with several drop-down menus
Filtering options for ETDs in the DRS.

New ETDs are processed and ingested every 2-3 months, depending on the time of year and the volume of ETD submissions, and can involve anywhere from 30 to 100 ETDs at a time. DOIs are generated and ETD contributor names are reviewed bi-annually.

General Growth

The total number of ETDs submitted by Northeastern students has increased significantly since 2008. From 2008-2010, there was an average of around 190 documents submitted annually. As the 2010s continued, that number steadily increased from 353 in 2013 to 583 in 2019. There was a small dip in 2020, possibly due to COVID interrupting degree completions, but since then, there have been approximately 540-590 ETDs submitted each year.

Degree Distribution

Almost 90% of ETDs produced from 2008-2010 were either for Ph.D. or MS degrees, but as the School of Education started producing theses for the Ed.D. degree, those quickly became common, and represented 34% of all ETDs produced by 2020. Additional degree programs also started producing ETDs from 2010-2020, with MA, DLP, and MFA degrees representing almost 5% of ETDs during that period. In the last 4-5 years, numbers have stabilized, with Ph.D. dissertations regularly accounting for around 45% of all ETDs, Ed.D. theses around 35%, MS theses hovering around 15%, and all other degree types filling out the remaining 5%.

Line graph titled "ETD Submissions by Degree Type (2008-2024)
Data visualization showing ETD submissions by degree type from 2008-2014. Created by Claude (Antropic) based on analysis of dataset exported from the DRS and transformed by the author. Generated May 2025.

College, School, Department, and Program Representation

The early majority of ETDs produced by Northeastern students were from the College of Engineering (COE), which accounted for almost 62% from 2008-2010. Throughout the 2010s, other colleges emerged as significant contributors, including the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, the College of Professional Studies (CPS), and the College of Science (COS).

Line graph titled "ETD Submissions by College (2008-2024)
Data visualization showing ETD submission by college from 2008-2024. Created by Claude (Anthropic) based on analysis exported from the DRS and transformed by the author. Generated May 2025.

Within the College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering remain the most prolific ETD producers, as well as the Chemistry and Chemical Biology program, the School of Education, and the Department of Art + Design.

The top 10 departments by total submission count:

  1. School of Education (2,143 submissions)
  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (910)
  3. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (705)
  4. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (316)
  5. Department of Art + Design (271)
  6. Computer Science Program (245)
  7. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (242)
  8. School of Pharmacy (212)
  9. Department of Chemical Engineering (209)
  10. Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology (202)

Addition of Supplementary Files

The first ETD to include supplemental files, or files submitted to accompany the ETD PDF file, first appeared in 2013. The number of supplemental files grew throughout the 2010s, with supplemental material representing 4% of all ETD file submissions during that time. Since 2020, the number of supplemental files has seen a slight decline, but there are still regular submissions, with 26 provided in 2024. The college that most often submits these files is the College of Arts, Media, and Design (CAMD), with almost 1 in 4 theses including supplemental materials.

Other notable contributors include COE and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH). The smallest contributor is CPS, which, despite being the largest contributor of ETDs overall, has only 11 total supplemental files since 2013.

Screenshot of an item in the DRS titled "Supplemental file for 'Horn of plenty.'" A photo of a decorative green plant is on the left and metadata is listed on the right
Screenshot of a supplementary file page that features a photograph stored in the DRS. Original photo by Hannah M. Groudas.

New Undergraduate Theses

More recently, undergraduate programs from departments like Biology, Biochemistry, Marine and Environmental Science, and Psychology have begun to submit electronic theses directly to DPS staff. DPS offers the same level of service to the undergraduate theses as the graduate ETDs and includes the same metadata in each accompanying description to ensure these materials are as discoverable as the graduate theses and dissertations.

Maintaining ETDs is a vital part of the DRS’ mission, presenting unique challenges that library staff are well-equipped to manage. As the submission processes, file formats, academic disciplines, and research topics continue to evolve, the library remains committed to preserving and providing access to these scholarly works. Through ongoing innovation and stewardship, we ensure that the academic contributions and history of Northeastern students are securely archived and shared for generations to come.

AI acknowledgement: Claude Projects was used to generate data visualizations based on ETD metadata exported from the DRS and transformed into a spreadsheet dataset. Specific visualizations based on identified columns were requested. Project instructions, prompts, and dataset are available here.

Bringing It All Together: Methods for Cataloging News Articles for the BNDA Version 2.0

Since its initial launch in September 2022, the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA) has established itself as one of the most comprehensive digital records of racial homicides collected to date. This blog series aims to highlight the work of the archivists on the BNDA team and their experiences preparing for the launch of BNDA Version 2.0. You can read more about the Version 2.0 update in Gathering the Red Record: A Two-Day Convening on Linking Racial Violence Archives.

Methods Overview

The first thing I have to say about the archival work methods for cataloging news articles at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s BNDA is that they are a team effort. The workflow structure is maintained through shared instructions, templates, the data dictionary, and a responsive, organized supervising team.

All of the archives assistant work is digital. Archives assistants receive batches of news articles to catalog in the form of spreadsheets with links to images of the original newspaper articles stored in the Digital Repository Service. We then verify those articles against information we currently have and complete standardized fields for the information we want supplied. If we encounter a question about the records that we can’t answer with assurance, we flag it to be reviewed by either our supervisors or the legal team.

When completed, those standardized spreadsheets are reviewed by the supervising team and transformed into a format compatible for inclusion in the BNDA. Having multiple team members verify information improves the accuracy of the records and makes for sustainable collections processing practices.

Our goal is to add as much accurate and data-verified cataloged information as possible in order to provide supporting evidence of each incident, case, and victim identifier. These standardized identifiers, as well as authorized names for each unique individual, allow the team to take advantage of the relational-based search capability of the Airtable database. Not only does this system help us make better cataloged records, it allows for more retrievable information for future research.

Examples in the Records

Washington Sniper Victims
One example of data verification is to identify the victim(s) present in a news article whenever possible, even when minimal information is present. Breaking news articles often lack details. Names can be absent or incorrect, or focus on the perpetrator of the crime rather than the victim. One strategy I find helpful is to work by victim-subject, going through batches of news articles that are all related to one victim or group of victims. This allows me to glean patterns of context clues that allow for victim identification even if the victim is unnamed.

Newspaper clipping with the headline "Baffled D.C. Police Sift Tangled Clues In Hunt for Sniper"
News article describing the ongoing search for the perpetrator and victims in the D. C. sniper case. Evening star. Washington, D.C.: October 16, 1940.
List of metadata tied to an article titled "Evening Star. Washington, D.C.: October 16, 1940. Baffled D.C. Police Sift Tangled Clues in Hunt for Sniper
Cataloging metadata for the news article (left).

I found this strategy particularly helpful when working with a case related to a serial sniper who murdered multiple victims in Washington, D.C., in 1940. Three victims identified over the months of press coverage were Hylan McClaine, Lushion Sam Banks, and Theodore I. Goffney, but the chronological order of their murders was not shared. Press coverage of the sniper continued into the 1960s, long after the trial, with inconsistent reference to the victims. At the BNDA, we can link the victim names at the forefront of these articles in our catalog, centering the narrative around the victims rather than the perpetrator.

Bryant Family Murder
The research crucial work that aids in the cataloging effort is also on display in the case of the 1932 Bryant family murder. The news coverage of the tragic murder of the Bryant family was sometimes unclear about which family members survived and which were killed in the horrible robbery, torture, and death by arson. Some articles appeared sympathetic to the murderers and provided little to no details on the victims.

Our Airtable database supports a field for notes written by Project Historian Jay Driskell when they are available. Through Jay’s notes, I could confirm with certainty that the father and son, Lewis and Ozola Bryant, were murdered. The mother, Missouri Bryant, survived. The more detailed news articles corroborated these facts. The Bryant murder trial also stands out as a case that upheld the murder charges against a white killer despite appeals up to the Missouri State Supreme Court.

A screenshot titled "Ozola Bryant and Lewis Bryant in Mississippi in 1932" with a case summary and other categories of metadata
The BNDA incident page for the killing of Ozola and Lewis Bryant

Given the graphic nature of the emotional events and the polarized reporting, I was grateful to have ready, retrievable access to previous work to clarify the Bryant family’s story in order to help me accurately represent the family in the cataloged work. I also benefitted from the concurrent work of another archives assistant and the support of my supervisor, Project Archivist Joy Zanghi.

These cases and many more are available in BNDA Version 2.0 and you can browse the current version now. I had the privilege of working with archival methods developed over the past 18 years of the project, taking into account the humanity of the sensitive subject matter. The final result is that the CRRJ developed an archival format with the BNDA that allows for the data within it to be scalable, buildable, and retrievable for the future.

CRRJ Archives Assistant Stephanie Bennett Rahmat (she/her/hers) has 17 years of experience working with historic and cultural heritage resources throughout the U.S. She completed her Master of Library and Information Science degree at Simmons University in 2021, with a focus on Archives Management and Cultural Heritage. She came to work in the archives and libraries after a career in North American archaeology.

Research Support Newsletter – Fall 2025

This blog was originally sent as a newsletter for Research Support Staff at Northeastern University on September 3, 2025. If you would like to subscribe to receive future newsletters, please click here.

Did you know the library can help with…your grant proposal?

Join us for our Accelerate Your Proposal Development event! This program is a countdown of proposal-related questions the library can help with, including personalized support for crafting data management and sharing plans, improving your data visualizations and graphics, strategies for efficient literature reviews, and citation management. We’ll share information about the tools and people who can help you develop key proposal components and supplementary materials. Whether you’re in the early stages of developing your proposal or fine-tuning it before submission, we’re happy to work with you.

This virtual event takes place Wednesday, October 29, from noon – 1 p.m. Eastern time. Register here.

Did you know we have access to…tools and services to complete evidence syntheses?

This month, we are highlighting two ways the library can support your evidence synthesis project. Evidence synthesis projects, which often do not require funding, can reveal important research gaps, thus strengthening future grant applications. If you are working on (or considering working on) a systematic review, scoping review, rapid review, or meta-analysis, read on!

Evidence Synthesis Service: Northeastern University Library provides a tiered set of support services for evidence synthesis projects such as systematic reviews, ranging from expert librarian guidance to full research partnerships. See our website and service tiers for more information.

Covidence: Covidence is a web-based evidence synthesis support tool that assists in screening references, data extraction, and keeping track of your work. Covidence requires registration with a Northeastern email address. If you already have an account, please sign in.

Start Smart — Foundations of Evidence Syntheses: Starting September 15, the library will be running a virtual workshop series for faculty and research staff on planning for and embarking on an evidence synthesis project.

Have any questions about completing evidence syntheses? Reach out to our expert, Philip Espinola Coombs.

We want to hear from you!

Research Data Storage Finder: We’re developing an interactive online tool to help researchers quickly narrow down the best platform for their data storage and archiving needs, and we’d love to hear what you think of what we’ve built so far. If you’d like to get a sneak peek and share your feedback, please let us know via this form.

That’s it!

Questions about the library? Email Alissa Link Cilfone, Head of STEM, or Jen Ferguson, Head of Research Data Services — we’d love to hear from you!