edward a. Department of education fipse for a national digital library of theses and dissertations, we review its origins see fox96a for an overview of the project , describe progress to date that warrants its now being called the networked digital library of theses and dissertations ndltd , explain some of the controversy that has led to widespread publicity and dissemination, and explore future growth possibilities. The first workshop about electronic theses and dissertations etds took place in 1987 with a technical focus on standards, namely applying sgml to the description of research. Ten years later, we realize that the proper aim should be improving graduate education by having students enter etds into a digital library which facilitates much broader access.

Achieving that goal calls for a sustainable, worldwide, collaborative, educational initiative of universities committed to encouraging students to prepare electronic documents and to use digital libraries ndltd. Since students often learn best by doing, this competency oriented program should ensure that the next generation of scholars is prepared more completely for the information age, in which they can apply and pass on their skills in academia or other research situations. With funding in 1996 from the southeastern universities research association sura , our virginia tech team was able to build upon local efforts, including a solid foundation of library developed processes, to facilitate a beta program in the southeast. Additional support from fipse, and in kind contributions from a number of sources, especially adobe, ibm, and microsoft, have enabled expansion to the national and international levels. Public forums afforded by the coalition for networked information cni , the council of graduate schools cgs , and many other groups, have made the idea of an etd initiative a familiar topic to hundreds of leaders at diverse universities.

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Much larger numbers have heard about the topic through newspaper, radio, and tv coverage ndltda. Yet, because news coverage often focuses on controversy, the discussion below attempts to concentrate on progress made and to dispel some misconceptions that may have arisen. For example, prompted in part by the ndltd, umi, which has the world's largest microform archive of theses and dissertations, has launched its proquest direct service of scanning at 300 dpi and using optical character recognition software to convert the scanned documents into text files into pdf, so text is recognized as accurately as current tools allow works it receives after 1996. Many groups, including cgs, have established committees to explore the concept of etds. Although these deserve concentrated attention, we will focus mainly on collaborative efforts and work that is specifically oriented toward building the ndltd.

Local progress toward ndltd has been made possible as a result of efforts by the library, graduate school, funded project team, and other parts of virginia tech. Several student project teams in courses in computer science cs4624, cs5604 have made important contributions, assisting in the preparation of multimedia training materials and prototype digital library implementations. Students studying digital libraries in university honors 3004 and cs6604 in fall 1997 have already started to select term projects to assist our efforts. Professor jong min bae has come from korea to spend a sabbatical year starting august 1997, providing further aid at virginia tech. In addition, there are students, faculty, and staff at other universities and organizations providing assistance by testing, adapting, and extending virginia tech's programs and processes. At the university of waterloo, a team has been studying about etds, and prepared a survey of worldwide activities wate97. North carolina state university recently established an etd web site, and the university of virginia makes available on w a student run etd resource directory, plus pointers to publications showing student interest in the initiative kirs97.

From these sites one can learn about investigations and pilot efforts in australia, aalborg university, the university of texas at austin, and university of south florida. We invite others involved in related efforts to provide pointers so that we may cite their work. Though it may take 12 18 months for a university to investigate the idea of etds, develop suitable policies, reach consensus, launch a pilot effort, begin to train students, and enhance local infrastructure to facilitate network submission by students, some institutions have moved more rapidly.

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Among those institutions joining ndltd most quickly are those in dagstuhl, germany and monterey, california. At the darmstadt university of technology, it is likely that interest was stimulated because of local expertise in multimedia information and systems. Etds allow students to apply those technologies directly and go beyond the limits of paper theses or dissertations by including audio, image and video illustrations and by adding hypertext links.

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In the case of the naval postgraduate school nps , building upon prior digital library activities norr97. A team of navy reserve officers studied the matter and reviewed documentation provided by virginia tech. Very shortly after a telephone conference that obtained additional information, university officials decided to join ndltd. Nps is obligated to provide access to its theses and dissertations to the navy worldwide this is much less expensive if electronic distribution methods can be employed. During its first year, ndltd has grown to 20 members, with scores of other institutions interested and in a number of cases, visited or briefed on the initiative.

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A team at university of south florida is helping prepare an edited sourcebook on electronic theses and dissertations, having produced a call for contributions, with publication planned in 1998. The university of virginia has taken the initiative on adapting the dienst system developed at cornell, and used in the networked computer science technical report library, lt steering committee. guidance for ndltd is provided by an international steering committee. The committee meets in the middle of march and september each year in washington, d.c. Members represent canada, uk, world bank african virtual university , universities and libraries in the southeast sura, solinet , western area graduate schools, the national science foundation, adobe, cni, cgs, ibm, cic big 10 , job accommodations network, nsf, oclc, u.s. After hearing reports from umi and oclc about archival and access services, members at the march 1997 meeting decided to encourage maximizing access, allowing as many players as become interested to provide various services for those interested in etds. This will be feasible if all member institutions freely share among themselves and their agents marc library catalog records describing their etds, and if each record contains one or more urns pointing to authentic full copies, such as might reside in a university archive. Thus, the ndltd support team at virginia tech is working to arrange interoperability tests, building upon existing library and digital library infrastructure.