University of Florida Libraries Working Toward Completed Digital Archive of 72 Years of Doctoral Dissertations

From The Independent Florida Alligator (U. of Florida Student Newspaper):

The Digital Services Department of the George A. Smathers Libraries is working toward building a digital collection of all dissertations written at UF from 1934 to 2006.
The collection will include approximately 12,000 dissertations upon completion.
Once the library receives approval from the author to digitize the contents of a dissertation, the process takes about eight months to complete. Shorey and her team complete quality control checks before and after they outsource the material to a third party to be scanned into the system.

From a University of Florida Libraries News Release:

The Digital Services Department of the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida is contacting authors and copyright holders of UF dissertations from 1934-2006 with e-mails, letters and postcards, to inform them of the digitization project. There is no cost to authors and copyright holders. The goal is to enable access to the past scholarship of the University of Florida by making all UF dissertations available electronically in the Institutional Repository at UF (IR@UF) at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ufetd, regardless of the original format.
“We are pleased to bring this important scholarly material to researchers,” said Dean of University Libraries Judith Russell. “The doctoral dissertations at the University of Florida represent a large amount of unique intellectual content and online access to the dissertations that were previously only available in print or microfilm means this research can now be viewed and read by scholars and students around the world.”
Having the dissertations online will be beneficial to researchers and society because it will build the overall collection of shared and available knowledge from past years at the University of Florida.
Of the 12,078 dissertations submitted between 1934 and 2006, 4,919 have been digitized, with more being added every day. After the print dissertations have been digitized, a physical copy will remain in the University Archives. The electronic version will replace the circulating print or microfilm copy. The copyright to the dissertations remains with the author or copyright holder. To view the dissertations already online or search for a person’s name go tohttp://ufdc.ufl.edu/ufetd.
Dissertations by authors who cannot be located through a search process will be digitized and remain available electronically unless the author or copyright holder chooses to “opt out” of public access to the work. Electronic versions will be retained for preservation purposes even if they are removed from public access. Updates on dissertation status within the project are also available. Authors can find dissertation status or “opt out” of public access at http://uflib.ufl.edu/mydissertation or contact project leader Christy Shorey directly at UFdissertations@uflib.ufl.edu or (352) 273-2831.

Direct to University of Florida Theses & Dissertations Collection Database

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Libraries, News, Open Access, Preservation