Martin Borchert Martin Borchert, Electronic Information Services Librarian, Queensland University of Technology Library, Queensland University of Technology , George Street, Brisbane, Queensland, 4000. mailto:m.borchert@qut.edu.au
The Australian Digital Theses (ADT) program has been designed to promote and increase access to the research output of Australian higher degree research students.
ADT was initially developed by a group of seven Australian universities, and is based on the work of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and uses a Web form to allow students to deposit their thesis electronically in PDF, to be accessible via both a local university interface, and the National ADT Database. About 500 Australian theses are now available on ADT.
Thesis publications produced by higher degree research students account for a significant percentage of Australia’s research output. In the past these publications have been stored in print format in the University Library of each student’s home institution. Access has been provided from within the Libraries or via the inter-library loan network.
Harnessing the advantages of the Web, the Australian Digital Theses (ADT) Program is designed to promote and facilitate access to the research output of Australia’s Masters by Research, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and PhD equivalent students.
The ADT database is available to the world at URL: http://adt.caul.edu.au/.
Queensland University of Technology is a second tier participant in the ADT program. This paper and accompanying poster have been published with the aim of promoting the ADT program to the Australian and world research and web communities, and have been published with the support of the ADT Program Coordinator, Mr Tony Cargnelutti t.cargnelutti@unsw.edu.au.
The concept and development of electronic thesis deposit systems has gained significant momentum the world over during the last decade. Major initiatives include the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) http://www.ndltd.org/ and the Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) Initiative http://etd.vt.edu/ of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute http://etd.vt.edu/.
ADT is based on the work done by the NDLTD and uses a variation of the software developed by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Cargnelutti, Piper and Kealy (1999) discuss many issues pertaining to the development of ADT.
The ADT program was developed by the original ADT membership group consisting of:
Since 2000, many Australian universities have joined the ADT program as members and active contributors to the database.
ADT uses a distributed database model. A central database, storing document metada only, is hosted by UNSW, which harvests the metadata gathered from a local digital theses database hosted at each member institution. This provides for the National ADT Database browse and search functionality at URL: http://adt.caul.edu.au/.
Each member institution is responsible for converting theses to digital format compliant to ADT standards, and for hosting and maintaining their local ADT database, with a local interface.
The ADT software loaded at each member site allows current or past research students to deposit metadata and their thesis electronically via the Web. The ADT model requires that students can do this only after their degree has been awarded. A local coordinator at each university approves the documents before they are loaded to the publicly available ADT network. Some institutions are offering the service whereby the institution converts the documents to digital format and loads them to the local database.
Portable Document Format (PDF) has been selected as the standard format for the storage and distribution of theses documents. The use of a universally available format, capable of converting long and complex documents such as theses (usually consisting of hundreds of pages, with images) to an accurate digital reproduction, has been critical to the success of the program. Typically, theses converted to PDF from a word processed [postscript] file are 2-4MB in size and are accessible.
Some institutions have done some retrospective conversion work, and have scanned older (often the more heavily used, higher demand) theses to TIFF and then to PDF, to improve access to these selected works, but resulting in significantly larger files.
About 500 theses from a number of institutions are now available via the ADT program, with the number of theses and member institutions growing. The service has proved very popular with students from many institutions.
Keen to provide this service to students, many Universities are now heavily promoting ADT to their students, and are considering whether to make digital thesis deposit mandatory, instead of, or as well as, the traditional print deposit to their local institution Library.
Some issues involving electronic publishing and copyright are also being addressed.
More information about ADT is available from the ADT Program Information Page http://www.library.unsw.edu.au/thesis/adt-ADT/info/info.html.
Martin Borchert; 2002. The authors assign to Southern Cross
University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive
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provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement
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Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web
and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the
document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.