A Bachelor and Master Theses Portal : Specific Needs and Business Opportunities for the DoKS Repository Tool

A few years ago a portal for bachelor and master theses from Flemish university colleges was established by means of the open source repository software DoKS. At present approximately 3500 theses from Flemish university colleges are available online. The growing use of the portal has led to a new communication stream that requires supervision and maintenance. Social software components amongst others are or will be integrated in the portal to give users a platform to perform tasks such as communicate, annotate and advertise. Although different local DoKS repositories and the concept of the DoKS application are similar to repositories and tools within the scientific community, the scope and the aim of a theses repository for university colleges are different. The main part of the database consists of applied research and the majority theses comprise trainee reports. Thus, in addition to students and instructors, the portal is attractive to key players in industry, non-profit institutions and private users with a particular interest in a theses subject. This paper examines the different opportunities and specific needs of a bachelor and master theses portal, illustrated by real life examples. Social software components can breath new life into former static text documents. Users can add comments, create blogs, add tables, illustrations and suchlike. Content sensitive advertisements enhance the content and usage of our theses records and create revenues that can be used to make new improvements. In addition we will discuss the need for new and strict procedures with regard to content control, copyright issues and embargos when a bulk collection of industry related theses are published online.