UC Spearheads Statewide Effort for Electronic Dissertations

The Internet age has brought us e-mail, e-commerce - and now in academia, the e-thesis and electronic dissertation. UC is leading a statewide effort which will make graduate research and scholarship widely available across the state and around the world.

Using the tremendous computing resources of the OhioLINK library network, master's theses and doctoral dissertations can now be submitted electronically into a central database. In the past, master's projects and doctoral research had to conform to the standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages bound together and stored on university library shelves.

Judith Trent, associate vice president for Research and Graduate Studies, said that the standardized form is much too limiting. "This allows much more freedom in how theses can be presented. If the dissertation includes a musical score or a painting, it can have a whole new dimension. It's a whole new world of scholarship."

Trent was a leader in the effort to create a statewide system in Ohio, the first statewide system in the country. She said she was concerned that "so much scholarship is lost" because it's not easily accessible. State leaders agree the new system has significant advantages.

"There are two major advantages," said Tom Sanville, director of OhioLINK. "On the technical side, we only have to store and maintain one system instead of multiple systems at all the universities with master's and doctoral programs. That's a tremendous savings in terms of the personnel, time and the technology requirements.

"There's also an advantage in terms of access. This is a lot simpler. Rather than searching multiple databases, people looking for this material can find it all in one place."

Sanville added that researchers outside of Ohio will also have access, because the OhioLINK site will be maintained as a free research database. Heather Chitwood in the School of Design was one of the first UC graduate students to use the new system. She submitted her MFA thesis electronically on May 26. It includes a virtual tour of the Peter Eisenman-designed Arnoff Center for Design and Art. She was happy from an economic and efficiency point of view. "The electronic submission process was much easier - no printouts, no double copies, no binding fees."

Most importantly, it allowed her the creativity to display her scholarship in the best possible formats, from three-dimensional computer animations to full, vivid color images. For a bound paper thesis, "pictures must be in black and white, and the quality just isn't as nice as it is on the computer," said Chitwood.

The advantages of electronic submissions extend beyond the artistic, however. Trent noted that scientific researchers could include their complete databases if they choose. The improvements are so significant the Graduate Council recently voted to make electronic submission mandatory by 2003. The Ohio initiative was a project of the Ohio Board of Regents through the Regents Advisory Committee on Graduate Study (RACGS), working in conjunction with OhioLink. It was an outgrowth of a movement started at Virginia Tech, which created the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Ohio's consortium joined the NDLTD in late May.

In addition to the statewide group Trent worked with, UC had its own team working on the project. They included Ron Frommeyer and David Kohl of University Libraries, Carol Deets from the College of Nursing and Doug Hott from the Division of Research and Advanced Studies.