Out of the Archives and Into the World: ETDs and the Consequences of Openness. - DRS

"The academic library has long served its institution by housing print dissertations in its archives. Until recently, once a student submitted her final, approved dissertation to the library, it would rarely again see the light of day. Although researchers might learn of a dissertation through the library’s catalog or through an index, accessing it was difficult. A university’s collection of its students’ dissertations was a walled garden, in many ways. But with the advent of electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) programs, a more appropriate analogy would be to a public park – a place where researchers from all over the world can freely access dissertations and master’s theses via the library’s institutional repository."