Retrospective Conversion of Masters Theses at Brigham Young University: Two Models

Retrospective Conversion of Masters Theses at Brigham Young University: Two Models

Scott Eldredge

Since 1999, the Lee Library at BYU has been converting printed masters theses to digital format for public on-line distribution. Two sets of theses were initially selected as pilot projects. Each project had unique goals and challenges leading to the application of different sets of approaches and solutions. The presentation will describe the conversion process for each project, review the factors involved in the decision-making process, and consider advantages and disadvantages, such as costs, accessibility, utility, etc., of each approach. Issues such as copyright clearance, vendor selection, document prep, metadata and technical standards, and project planning will be reviewed. The final products, the two sets of online theses, will be demonstrated and compared. The Projects: ""Mormon"" Theses This project involved over 600 masters theses topically related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (BYU's sponsoring institution) or its membership. The theses date from the 1930s to the present and come from a variety of academic departments at BYU. Bound copies are located in the Lee Library These works were scanned to TIFF files, text-converted and marked up in XML by an outside vendor. Approximately 530 are currently available on-line as static HTML files with links to JPEG images of each individual page. The theses are fully text-searchable, have associated metadata and are linked to the MARC records in the on-line catalog. Benson Institute The theses in this project were all funded in part or sponsored by the Ezra Taft Benson Institute at BYU. They were submitted to various South American universities. Copies provided to the Benson Institute are held in the Institute's library. All cover agricultural topics and are written in Spanish. The works are being scanned to TIFF files and converted to PDF Image files in-house. The abstracts are being transcribed and translated to English. Both the English and Spanish texts of the abstracts are searchable as metadata fields in the digital library. MARC records with links are being added to the online catalog.

2002