An ETD Submission System for the UK

The ETD movement has not yet taken root in the UK. Nevertheless, activity in the field has been growing steadily over the past few years. UTOG, the UK Theses Online Group, was established several years ago, and was aware of the activities of the ETD movement, but also of the distinctive characteristics of thesis publishing in the UK, which have made it so far unsympathetic to the creation of an ETD culture. In 2001, UTOG commissioned a report into the digitisation of theses from the SELLIC1 Project at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to considering retrospective digitisation, the report also looked at the issues involved in the production and management of ‘born digital’ theses, identified reasons for the UK to become properly involved in this initiative, and recommended that UK institutions join the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). These ideas were taken forward by JISC’s Scholarly Communications Group, and SELLIC was encouraged to submit a project proposal to the JISC Focus on Access to Intellectual Resources (FAIR) programme at the beginning of 2002, under the name Theses Alive! As a result, a twoyear project was funded, based at Edinburgh, and began its work in a national effort to promote ETDs in November 2002. Theses Alive! is one of three projects in electronic theses funded by JISC. The others are DAEDALUS, led by Glasgow, and Electronic Theses, led by the Robert Gordon University. Theses Alive! is working with both of these. Several UK universities, and, indeed, the British Library, have joined the NDLTD within the last year. The NDLTD is a realistic and pragmatic movement. It does not expect institutions to change everything overnight. There is a journey to be undertaken, the three basic steps of which are: 1. Ensure that the metadata for ETDs is available online. 2. Move to a hybrid SYSTEM of print and online TDs for a period of time. 3. Arrive at the point at which the online medium is the authorised medium for the production of TDs. This journey is likely to take several years. In the Theses Alive! Project, we hope to take a number of universities to the second stage of this three-stage process.