More than 9,500 dissertations from University of Florida graduate students of years gone by now languish on UF library shelves. The dissertations have been cast aside in the digital age which demands instant information.
But, if a new project at the George A. Smathers Libraries Digital Library Center is successful, decades of writings will soon be available around the world, with just the click of a mouse.
“What I’d like people to see is that the University of Florida is doing good work, and that we have in the past as well,” said Cathy Martyniak, head of the Library Preservation department.
Dissertations were first submitted electronically in 1998 at UF, and since 2001, the university required electronic submission for all dissertations. Martyniak said. Copyright restrictions require any doctoral candidate who completed work before 2001 to sign a release granting permission for scanning and Internet distribution....
Once a release form is submitted, the dissertation is scanned at the Digital Library Center and information called “metadata” provides information about the work, such as title, author, subject, year of publication and length. The work is then uploaded to the Digital Collections’ Web site, where the metadata allows for easy and accurate retrieval....
To participate in this project, UF dissertation authors are encouraged to visit [here].
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/05/2007 11:15:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
