University of North Texas

Colleges and universities are steadily transitioning from traditional paper and microfilm formats for graduate theses and dissertations. While this move from print-based to electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) greatly enhances the accessibility and sharing of graduate student research, it also presents significant challenges for the academic libraries trying to preserve digital content. To promote best practices and to increase the capacity of academic libraries to reliably preserve ETDs, the University of North Texas Libraries, together with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, the Educopia Institute/MetaArchive Cooperative, and the libraries of Virginia Tech, Rice University, Boston College, Indiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona will develop and share a toolkit of guidelines, educational materials, and a set of software tools for life-cycle data management and preservation of ETDs.