50,000 full-text theses now available on EThOS

EThOS announce that just over 50,000 full-text theses are now available on EThOS, the E-Theses Online Service. The 50,000th thesis to be added was ”The process of writing using a computer: a study of first school children”, written by Charalabos-Babis Bakopoulos from University of East Anglia. The thesis, written in 1991, was added to EThOS after being digitised at the BL in response to a request submitted through EThOS.

The milestone comes at a significant time for EThOS who are now able to share further news of some changes that aim to move EThOS onto a more sustainable footing. As many participants will already know, after extensive consultation and some challenging times during 2010, a new EThOS Governing Board has been established which will now guide the development of the EThOS service and oversee the introduction of a new shared service business model between the HE community and the British Library.

The Board has now appointed an EThOS Service Manager – Sara Gould – to work with HE and the BL to develop the detail of any changes and roll out the new model. This 1-year role is generously funded by JISC.

The Board has also now approved a number of high-level changes, the most important of which is the introduction of a membership fee for all HEIs. This shared contribution will allow EThOS to implement all of the upgrades and improvements to the existing service and bring in the additional elements that have been discussed over the last year or so.  

The detailed membership fees and other arrangements are being shared in an EThOS Update e-newsletter sent to all EThOS contacts today. If you are the EThOS manager for your institution but have not received the Update, please contact sara.gould@bl.uk.

Please be assured that the current EThOS service continues completely as normal, and we will communicate any changes as they occur. If you have EThOS digitisation funds held with the BL, you do not need to do anything: the service continues as usual and no changes are planned for HEIs that continue to use the BL’s digitisation service. If you have questions about EThOS, please continue to send them to ethos-help@bl.uk.

Launch of Theses Collection Wales

In February the Welsh Repository Network held a launch event for ‘ Theses Collection Wales‘. The collection allows users to view both electronic and paper copies of theses and dissertations from every Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Wales through a dedicated catalogue.

Screen shot of ‘Theses Collection Wales’

The Theses Collection Wales includes approximately 50,000 theses and dissertations which have been presented for postgraduate degrees in Welsh HEIs. The collection comprises theses and dissertations arising from PhD and research Masters degrees, as well as taught Masters dissertations which have a Welsh interest or have gained a distinction.

Participants at the launch

 

The vast majority of the current collection is in paper format, but electronic deposit is becoming increasingly common. Through the WRN every HEI in Wales has developed an institutional repository to store and provide online access to their research output, including electronic theses and dissertations – more commonly referred to as ‘e-theses’. In 2009 the NLW and the WRN began work on the ‘e-theses harvesting service.’ This service enabled the NLW to collect, through harvesting, copies of the full-text e-theses and to provide continued access to them through preservation management.

 

 The project team

Anyone may search Theses Collection Wales but to access the resources within the collection it is necessary to register as a NLW reader. This will enable you to request to view a print copy of a thesis in the Library Reading Rooms or alternatively to view and download an e-thesis within the catalogue.

All of the electronic PhD theses that have been collected by the NLW from participating institutions will be further harvested by the British Library’s EThOS service. EThOS aims to provide access to all theses produced by UK higher education. For more information regarding EThOS visit http://ethos.bl.uk/

The presentations delivered during the event are now available online - find them on the WRN blog at http://welshrepositorynetwork.blogspot.com/2011/02/launch-of-theses-collection-wales.html 

Thanks to WRN for the text and the photos.

Welsh Repository Network Enhancement Project

Information Services at Aberystwyth University has been awarded £260k by the JISC to support the Welsh Repository Network Enhancement Project as part of their national Repositories Programme. Aberystwyth University will act as the lead partner in the newly funded scheme which will involve collaboration with all other Welsh Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the National Library of Wales.

The project will run from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2011 and will look to build on work from previously funded programmes including the UK wide Repositories Support Project and a Welsh Repository Network Start-Up Project which have helped to establish Aberystwyth in the forefront of UK developments in this field.

The project team will investigate the potential of a collaborative, centrally managed model to accelerate the development and uptake of repository services by Welsh HEIs and will investigate the potential for a mediated deposit bureau to facilitate the increased population of newly established repositories with appropriate academic research outputs.  Another project strand will work on the creation of a Welsh Thesis Harvesting Service in collaboration with the National Library of Wales, developing an earlier pilot programme known as Repository Bridge.

The Project Director will be Bill Hines and the Project Manager will be Jackie Knowles, with the support of Hannah Payne as Project Officer and another newly appointed Technical Officer.