Challenging assumptions and unlocking the last treasure trove of scholarship

  • For far too many years libraries have collected the outputs (thesis / dissertation) of successful Doctorate (PhD) awards at our institutions. We record very basic bibliographic information and then lock the door. But the work in these resources are unique and give us a window into scientific, social, political, economic over the centuries. Yet we have done nothing but treat them as just another part of the university record. We are all sitting on the last unexplored world of how thought has developed, a chance to see how some of the great thinkers developed over their studies. This paper challenges our community to do so much better than we have to date. Over the last few years many universities have been accepting born digital works and putting them into institutional repositories. In the UK the British Library started the EThOS service and asked institutions for permission (or to pay) to digitise the works and make them available open access. At the University of Surrey both approaches saw us provide under 1,000 theses online. We have also been working with ProQuest on digitising additional works and suddenly, the hits on our repository, and the downloads of material from it, increased exponentially. And we were not the only ones, in the UK those of us who were investing in making theses available were seeing an increase in engagement with our open access repositories. At Surrey we are great advocates of open research, and our institution has always focused on applied science. We were aware that we had thousands of assets that could benefit society worldwide; as well as continue to build our academic reputation. We have made significant benefits to society, but at times the link to the technologies and theories developed by our academy have been lost in history. By ensuring our thesis are immediately available we immediately help current scholars as well as members of the public; but we still had more to do to exploit those hidden gems still not available.

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Metadaten
Author:Fiona Greig
URN:urn:nbn:de:0290-opus4-163770
Parent Title (German):TK 3: Content kuratieren / Forschungsdaten und ihre Communities (18.03.2019, 16:00 - 18:00 Uhr, Saal 5)
Document Type:Conference publication (Presentation slides)
Language:English
Year of Completion:2019
Release Date:2019/03/07
Themes:Elektronische Publikationen, elektronisches Publizieren, Forschungsdaten, Open Access
German Bibliothekartage / BiblioCon:108. Deutscher Bibliothekartag in Leipzig 2019 = 7. Bibliothekskongress
108. Deutscher Bibliothekartag in Leipzig 2019 = 7. Bibliothekskongress / Themenkreise / Podium der Verbände / TK 3: Content kuratieren / Forschungsdaten und ihre Communities
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
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