Adding Value to Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Institutional Repositories

Use the link to access the full text article from D-lib Magazine.  The abstract reads as follows: "Part of the grey literature, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) represent a growing segment of open, available content in institutional repositories (IR) where they contribute to the impact and ranking of their institution. More than half of all IRs listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories contain ETDs. Most of these open access projects have similarities and common features, such as access to full text and compliance with the OAI metadata harvesting protocol. But more important are the differences, with regard to metadata, policy, access restrictions, representativeness, file format, status, quality and related services. In this paper, we investigate what can be done to improve the quality of content and service provision in an open environment, in order to increase impact, traffic and usage. Based on a review of 54 recent communications and articles on PhD theses in institutional repositories, this paper shows five ways in which institutions can add value to the deposit and dissemination of electronic theses and dissertations and describes two developments that are challenging institutional repositories."