Short Summaries of ETD's at Peer Institutions with WWW links, Other than VT


University of Waterloo University of Texas at Austin
University of South Florida NC State University
Aalborg University University of Virginia
West Virginia University University of Michigan
University of Toronto York University

I thought the following summary of peer institutions' ETD activity might help. This information takes for granted a certain knowledge of the extensive data available at Viriginia Tech, and thus seeks to show what's going on at other schools. There are short blurbs on some 10 or so schools with tangible ETD efforts of some kind. Some peers are doing things or have considered issues we have raised in our discussions (cost, for instance, cf. U. of S. Florida, etc.):

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University of Waterloo
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Has tested ETD's in PDF (Adobe) format-- concluded PDF was a temporary means of storage, relatively easy to do. Has not instituted a full program. The Electronic Thesis Project Team recommends that the University of Waterloo proceed towards adopting a policy of accepting, storing, and providing access to electronic theses. It is the intention of the Electronic Thesis Project Team (ETPT) to explore the governance issues and technical feasibility of submission, storage and distribution of ETDs at the University of Waterloo. The overall goal of the team is to identify and explore all of the issues which would be involved in an ETD being accepted as the sole form of submission by a student in the fulfillment of the thesis requirement of her/his graduate program.
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University of Texas at Austin
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I wrote to them and received this: ---- We have accepted one electronic thesis and one electronic dissertation; our faculty has voted to require e-dissertations within five years and e-abstracts sooner than that. But this vote has engendered some recent soul-searching and re-thinking. Teresa A. Sullivan, Ph.D. Vice President and Graduate Dean
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University of South Florida
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To avoid additional burdens being placed on the Graduate School, we agreed that students would be held responsible for putting their work in PDF format. A PDF will cost about $30, and the University will need to establish work stations and pilot training so students can author an etds w/ little effort. After careful deliberation, the USF ETD Task Force recommends that USF:
  1. Act now to implement ETDs at USF.
  2. Invite graduate students across the University to submit Theses and Dissertations in PDF format in the fall 97-98 academic year.
  3. Allow departments to begin requiring ETDs in the fall 97-98 academic year.
  4. Consider requiring ETDs by the 98-99 academic year.
  5. Fund the necessary hardware and software to support ETDs at USF.
  6. Establish a Web presence for ETDs, one which links to other Universities who are working toward institutionalizing ETDs.
  7. Determine feasibility of archiving theses through University Microfilm International (UMI). Currently, only USF dissertations are sent to UMI for archival and distribution purposes.
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NC State University
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**VERY GOOD FLOW CHART FOR Ph.D. AND MA'S:
See chart
During Spring 1997, the NCSU Libraries, the Graduate School and the Information Technology office began a pilot project that allows selected theses and dissertations to be submitted, approved and accessed electronically. The local effort is part of a larger project sponsored by the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and prototyped by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to create a digital thesis and dissertation repository for the Southeast.
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Aalborg University
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A four month project that ended in spring 1996. The project on digitilized PhD theses from Aalborg University was made in coorporation with the Ministry of Research. The main purpose of the project was to make PhD theses accessible via the World Wide Web and make it possible for users all over the world to read these theses on screen or to print them for further reading. Another purpose of the project was to see how it would be possible to link references from databases to the PhD theses in a way in which it would be easy and simple for the users to get them in online editions. That meant that there should be links from both Aalborg University Library's OPAC and the national database of Danish research "DANDOK" to each individual PhD thesis. The project succeeded in most aspects, but is was not possible to make links from Aalborg University Library's OPAC because the W3 interface was delayed. The group that worked with the project found that the best and most effective way to digitalize the theses was to convert the theses into a PDF version, which keeps the theses in their almost original forms when printed and seen on screen (that was a strong wish from the authors).
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University of Virginia
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The Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) project offers students the opportunity to submit their works electronically. ETDs will be stored in a digital library and made available through VIRGO (on-grounds library searcher) as full-text searchable documents. Authors may withhold release of their work in order to satisfy pending commitments. Students will use their software of choice to create the initial documents. Ultimately they will produce an archival file in either PDF (Portable Document Format) or SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).
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West Virginia University
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West Virginia University requires electronic submission of all theses and dissertations as of August 15, 1998.
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University of Michigan
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UM has an agressive plan, the skeleton of this plan provides the text excerpts here, but actual project is still under way. This is linked to their Humanities Text Initiative. The University of Michigan Thesis and Dissertation Library is a service of Rackham Graduate School to provide access to dissertations and theses produced by UM grads. It is part of the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education. The full text of all dissertations submitted from 1996 on can be searched and browsed through this Library. Master's theses will be added to the Library starting in 1998.
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University of Toronto &
York University
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The Joint Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Project of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, University of Toronto Libraries and York University Libraries was formed by the interested parties to investigate the feasability, mechanics and workflow of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). The Project has completed and made available four reports that are available on this site. We report on current developments in the field, traditional thesis and dissertation workflow at University of Toronto and York University and the concerns of publishers. The project solicits ETD submissions from the student body. Currently we have eight ETDs in PDF format. A short report on the conversion process has also been made available. At this stage of the project - July 1998 - it should be emphasized that our research is a work-in-progress. More work has to be done, and more issues have to be considered, before any conclusions can be drawn.