COLLOQUY

Though the recent Chronicle article and others in the news have given NDLTD a good deal of publicity, they have omitted many important details that bear on this topic.

First, the primary aim is to enhance graduate education. In this era of pre-college students learning a good deal about electronic publishing, we feel it is essential that the future leaders of the scholarly community, those whose research leads to theses and dissertations, understand the issues and technologies relating to electronic publishing and digital libraries. These are best learned by direct involvement, which many would not undertake unless required, even though the process saves students money, is very simple in most cases, and leads to help by campus staff if there are difficulties. Why all the fuss about turning in an electronic thesis, when the work is created using a word processor, and many conferences and journals require electronic submission? If all graduate students turn in an electronic thesis, we will have once and for all made a dramatic shift to be able to capture future scholarly work for posterity in electronic forms. And if all graduate students! and their committees think about issues of copyright, intellectual property, and their relationship with publishers, there will be a dramatic increase in awareness of the thorny economic concerns facing universities and libraries as the world of publishing rapidly evolves. So, students benefit by learning, and faculty benefit by having more knowledgeable students and by being exposed to these issues.

Second, students and faculty are protected in NDLTD through the use of digital library methods and technologies (not just putting works "on the World-Wide Web") so their preferences regarding access are enforced. We allowed this from the very beginning, and strengthened the protection after further consultation with students and faculty. Technology allows us to restrict access to campus, which generally does not bother publishers regarding prior publication concerns, or to hold part or all of a work for a year, or longer, so that eventually we can make the detailed results of much of the scholarship at our institution part of the world's literature. This arrangement is not a reaction of our project to complaints, but rather an integral part of our fitting into the changing world of publishing, and a vehicle for increasing the dialog between universities and publishers on dissemination of knowledge, as well as further unlocking the contributions of universities to benefit society. I offer to work with any publishers interested in continuing this dialog, since we think that the genre of electronic theses and dissertations nicely supplements other methods of scholarly communication, rather than competing with them.

Third, we have clear evidence that both students and faculty can benefit. Students learn, can save money, can use multimedia (even as simple as color in a diagram) to be more expressive, and if they allow access can have a much wider audience for their work than otherwise. We have one work that has been downloaded over 10,000 times! I use electronic theses in my classes, and thousands of people from all over the world make use of our relatively small collection already. Theses are an excellent source of literature reviews, that are very hard to find in specialized areas otherwise, even if they just serve to help one locate possibly relevant publications. I'm working on a proposal now and just pointed a possible sponsor to a new dissertation, which saves both of us considerable time in exploring the notion of collaboration.

There is worldwide interest in digital libraries, and NDLTD provides a way to build an enormous one, with great potential benefit, with very little cost (indeed, in most cases actual savings). The key is process re-engineering, which the world of business learned years ago was essential for survival. In the course of graduate research, students can simply upload their electronic documents to a campus server, rather than using a photocopier -- avoiding the need for future expensive scanning or other conversions. If each student, and each university, does its part, there will be hundreds of thousands of works captured in what may become one of the most beneficial collaborative efforts universities have ever undertaken. That may take a number of years; I began to work on this in 1987 and am willing to continue for several more decades, as best fits into the plans of students, faculty, and universities.

-- Edward A. Fox, Professor, Computer Science (posted 2/10, 11:55 a.m., E.S.T.)

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