1. Electronic Theses and Dissertations An American Perspective Gail McMillangailmac@vt.edu Digital Library and Archives http://scholar.lib.vt.edu Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

2. What is the situation? Most of the basic research and substantial applied research in the U.S. is done in our universities. Primary sources for this research Dissertations Derivative publications Theses and dissertations Underutilized Inaccessible

3. What are we doing? Computer-based technology Content Availability Educating future scholars Publish electronically Effectively use digital libraries More creative scholarship Access to the knowledge

4. What is the long-term vision? 400,000 students annually Graduate degrees Exposure to electronic publishing ETDs become rich hypermedia works Graduate education More effective Students more productive Universities publish their scholarship Knowledge and technology transfer Faster Better

5. From One to Many 1987: Discussions begin 1995: Virginia Tech Graduate School, Library, Computer Science partnership 1996 ETD_db (submission/management software) University governance approves requirement 1997: Required for ALL Masters’ theses and Doctoral dissertations 2004: Over 5,836 ETDs

6. From One to Many NDLTD Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations 197 universities members 58% non-US university members (114) 42% US universities (83) 32% require ETDs 13 institutional members

7. Old vs. New at Virginia Tech 50,000 bound theses and dissertations 4,200 shelving feet 30 check-outs/week 6,000 ETDs 18,000 files 95% pdf 3% tif, gif, jpg.5% avi, wav.5% mov, mpg 22 gigabytes 1,156 distinct files requested weekly

8. Authors Decide Access

10. International Use of ETDs

11. Why are ETDs so popular? Attractive as well as informative ETDs Colorful images Movement and sound Display for on-screen viewing Alternative means of conveying information Expanded network of research colleagues

12. ETDs: Library Goals Improve library services Accessible sooner Constantly available Reduce work Catalog from etext Eliminate handling: mailing to UMI, bindery prep, check-out, check-in, reshelving, etc. Programmatic notifications Save space

13. Low maintenance, high use Include with other digital library activities Hardware Maintenance, security already in place Software ETD_db Submission and management scripts http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/ –Current: Varied levels of access, email notifications –Planned: Timed release from restrictions, online faculty approval Digital repository Search engine

14. ETDs Stimulate Discussion Archiving Digital format only Multimedia formats Frequent back-ups Copies at multiple sites Copyright Authors retain their rights Permit library to store and provide access Give publishers similar permissions Publishers

15. ETDs and Publishing Authors’ ambitious publication plans 85%: articles, proceedings, chapters, books, etc. 43% of surveyed alumni published How many encountered resistance from publishers because ETD was online? Zip, zero, zilch.

16. ETDs and Publishers Early controversies waning slowly Elsevier IEEE Computer Society Association of Computing Machinery American Chemical Society Transfer all authors’ rights? Many publishers will share rights if asked Publishers’ policies databases SHERPA: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php University of Cincinnatti: http://www.etd.uc.edu/journal/

17. Lessons Learned Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come. Access exceeds expectations Disappointing 10% inaccessible No longer experimental Number and diversity of NDLTD institutions Implementation of new formats slower than expected Remarkable increase in exposure to graduate student research

18. ETD2005 8th International Symposium University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia 27-30 Sept 2005 http://adt.caul.edu.au/etd2005/etd2005.html