ETD initiatives: An audit of international landscape

ETD initiatives: An audit of international landscape

Tripathi, Manorama

Objectives: At present, libraries, worldwide, are making concerted efforts to facilitate transformation of theses to e- forms. In India, too, ETD activities are going on at an accelerated pace. The country has one of the largest educational systems across the globe. There are 634 universities and 33023 colleges in the country; every year more tan 11000 doctoral theses are awarded to the students. The University Grants Commission, (India) notification, 2009 has mandated submission of e-theses, by the research scholars, to the universities. All universities are required to setup e- theses repository to facilitate e- submission, archiving, maintenance and access to them. The paper focuses on the progress of ETD initiatives taken in India. The data is being collected through questionnaire method and whatever (information) is available in public domain in order to find out the following: 1. Current / Ongoing projects –various universities involved in ETD projects 2. Content/Total collection 3. Coverage of subject areas 4. Objectives of ETD 5. Use of software 6. Metadata schema used 7. Competency of the staff to maintain ETD 8. Policies of the universities with regard to acquisition/acceptance of etheses. 9. Policies of Government/Research Council/University Grants Commission(UGC) The paper elaborates and compares the ETD initiatives taken in UK and Australia with India. Methods: Questionnaire and whatever information is available on websites of the universities.

2012