Dissertation archiving and access: A case study for accessibility and preservation

Many universities keep paper copies of dissertations, without reliable back-up. Vulnerable to theft, fire and decay, they also take up valuable shelf space. Dissertations may be held in several different media within an institution. ProQuest Information and Learning, publishing under the UMI imprint, is the designated "national repository" by the Library of Congress, who deems the ProQuest dissertations as a remotely held collection. Many libraries have been interested in having their retrospective titles placed in this collection since microfilming and digitizing an institution's dissertations and master's theses are important ways to showcase its research and academic history, provide access for students and researchers from a single entry point and enhance the institution's standing in the international academic arena. In this paper Texas A&M will be used as an example with publisher Austin McLean of ProQuest Information and Learning explaining a case study for a comprehensive dissertation publishing program that focuses on both keeping the data archivally secure as well as increasing access via online distribution. The paper will detail the library / institution partnership that involved a combination of new and existing services to provide a complete access and archive solution which involved Microfilming. Material Preparation, Target Preparation, Microfilming and Inspection, Negative Storage, Publishing, Scanning (detailing the process by which microfilmed dissertations are loaded onto a SunRise Imaging Proscan 3 models, which are powered by a 300 MHz Pentium P3 processor, 128 MB of RAM, running from a Windows NT 4.0 operating system), Image Storage and Data Sampling / Migration and MARC Records creation.