Presentation Type

Panel Discussion

Program Description

At Reed College, every student must complete a year-long thesis project and deposit a print copy of their final thesis in the Library. Though a descriptive catalog record (title, author, advisor, and department) exists for each of these 17,000 theses, students and faculty have trouble discovering relevant theses and tracking the evolution of previous research projects. An electronic theses collection does exist, but participation is voluntary and deposit rates low. This spring, the Library embarked on a digital scholarship pilot project to determine what resources and workflows will be necessary to digitize new incoming theses as well as retrospectively digitizing the print collection.

This talk will cover both the conceptual and practical challenges of a thesis digitization project including:

  • The publication status of undergraduate theses
  • Whether to make the electronic theses available to the public
  • Copyright considerations
  • Scanning workflows
  • Metadata for the IR vs the catalog
  • Piping IR records into discovery layer (Primo)
  • Staffing project with undergraduates
  • Management of accompanying thesis data
  • Long term goals of moving the institution to requiring electronic deposit
  • Lessons learned from the project so far

The talk will be relevant for any attendee dealing with theses and dissertations in their own IR or who are considering how to begin a large scale retrospective scanning project. We will also attempt to use the talk time to elicit feedback and hear about the experiences of attendees who have done similar projects.

Start Date

7-20-2018 9:10 AM

End Date

7-20-2018 10:00 AM

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/26310

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Jul 20th, 9:10 AM Jul 20th, 10:00 AM

When You Are Falling, Dive: Launching a Thesis Digitization Project

At Reed College, every student must complete a year-long thesis project and deposit a print copy of their final thesis in the Library. Though a descriptive catalog record (title, author, advisor, and department) exists for each of these 17,000 theses, students and faculty have trouble discovering relevant theses and tracking the evolution of previous research projects. An electronic theses collection does exist, but participation is voluntary and deposit rates low. This spring, the Library embarked on a digital scholarship pilot project to determine what resources and workflows will be necessary to digitize new incoming theses as well as retrospectively digitizing the print collection.

This talk will cover both the conceptual and practical challenges of a thesis digitization project including:

  • The publication status of undergraduate theses
  • Whether to make the electronic theses available to the public
  • Copyright considerations
  • Scanning workflows
  • Metadata for the IR vs the catalog
  • Piping IR records into discovery layer (Primo)
  • Staffing project with undergraduates
  • Management of accompanying thesis data
  • Long term goals of moving the institution to requiring electronic deposit
  • Lessons learned from the project so far

The talk will be relevant for any attendee dealing with theses and dissertations in their own IR or who are considering how to begin a large scale retrospective scanning project. We will also attempt to use the talk time to elicit feedback and hear about the experiences of attendees who have done similar projects.