Theses and dissertations are important knowledge resource created by graduate students in
universities or institutes of higher learning. Due to lack of bibliographic control, and restricted
access, these grey literature collect dust on shelves of libraries. Hence these are lost to prospective
researchers and students to further their studies etc. Although many national and international
efforts are being made to collect, collate and distribute theses and dissertations in many forms,
none is comprehensive. The present trend is to prepare the theses in electronic form to facilitate
easy online access to metadata, abstract and table of content or full text , the theses become OAIPMH
compliant and can be searched on internet from anywhere. Depending upon access restrictions
the theses can be harvested and stored in any institutional repositories. Indian scenario of theses
and dissertations as knowledge resources, and maiden efforts by Tocklai Library in creation of
Institutional Repository [IR] of all theses and dissertations in tea science and technology including
other aspects are discussed. Proposes for a networked repository of TeaETDs among possible
stakeholders in the plan.
This paper focuses on the importance of OAI-PMH in the aspect of accessibility to the digital
repositories. The basic structure of OAI-PMH and its functional elements are given along with
some existing metadata harvester services of India. The paper discusses about the PKP Harvester
software and its users. Concludes that OAI-PMH is an effective solution of the problem of lack of
interoperability.