The Theses Canada Online Portal at the National Library of Canada

The Theses Canada Online Portal at the National Library of Canada

Sharon Reeves

Theses Canada, a service of the National Library of Canada, has coordinated a centralized theses program for Canadian universities since 1965. Our mission has been to acquire and preserve a comprehensive collection of Canadian theses and to provide access to them within Canada and throughout the world. As many Canadian universities move rapidly towards electronic theses submission programs our mission has expanded to include the acquisition and preservation of Canadian theses in this new format and to support Canadian universities during the transition period. To this end a theses portal is being developed for the National Library of Canada website. Our goal is to make the portal a comprehensive repository of freely available Canadian electronic theses and dissertations. Expected to be launched by the end of 2003, phase one of the Theses Canada Online Portal will include bibliographic records for the over 225,000 theses in our collection, as well as approximately 45,000 full text electronic theses digitized for Theses Canada by UMI Dissertations Publishing during the period 1998-2002. Planning for phase two of the portal development, which will permit Canadian universities to submit e-theses and metadata directly to the National Library of Canada, is already underway. The National Library of Canada has been represented on the NDLTD Steering Committee since its inception in 1997. The long term goal of Theses Canada is to make Canadian electronic theses and dissertations available in the NDLTD Union Catalogue.

2003