Electronic Theses and Dissertations An American Perspective

Gail McMillan Digital Library and Archives Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [email protected]

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authors Decide Access

Inaccessible 10% Mixed Access 2% Restricted Access 23% Unrestricted Access 65%

Average successful requests per day 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

United Kingdom Canada Germany France Italy Australia Japan Netherlands Spain India Brazil Romania Taiwan -

International Use of ETDs

50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 400,000 2003 2001 1999

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

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

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

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

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.

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/

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

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