DAEDALUS: Facing the Challenges of E-Theses at the University of Glasgow

DAEDALUS: Facing the Challenges of E-Theses at the University of Glasgow

William J. Nixon

DAEDALUS is a three year nationally funded project to build a range of OAI-compliant digital collections at the University of Glasgow. These collections include published and peer-reviewed papers, grey literature and e-theses. The University of Glasgow always been part of the BL thesis deposit scheme, and contributes to the Index to Theses accepted for higher degrees by the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland since its inception. The University is a member of UTOG (University Theses Online Group), and became a member of the Virginia based NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations) in 2001. The University is a significant producer of theses and about 370 full higher degree theses are accepted each year. DAEDALUS will enable us to develop an e-Theses collection around the software provided by the NDLTD and to use that as a catalyst for establishing guidelines and policies for the deposit of e-theses. The initial service will be voluntary and complementary to the hardcopy submission. This paper will discuss the issues and challenges faced by Glasgow in setting-up this service. It will be set within the wider context of the provision of a national UK strategy for e-theses deposit and the work undertaken by Edinburgh and The Robert Gordon University. The challenges for DAEDALUS will include a range of cultural and technical issues such as adoption of the service and the use of mixed media, which must be overcome for the project to be successful. The project will work in partnership with a range of different departments, which already host some student theses to create a centralised service analogous to that in place for our printed theses for disclosure and long term preservation.

2003