Electronic Theses And Dissertations: An Indispensable Tool for Access to Global Research Output

Abstract

Providing access to information has always been a function of Libraries and Information Centres (L & ICs). Access to information is crucial for education, science and culture and for fostering democracy in the information society. The principle of ‘free and universal access to information as well as freedom in the creation and dissemination of knowledge’ is a fundamental goal of the L & ICs. Theses and Dissertations (TDs) among all the primary sources are probably least used because firstly, their existence is not known in many cases, and, secondly, they are not easily accessible due to their unpublished status. This paper focuses on access and technology issues concerning ETDs, nature and benefits, methods of developing digital archives, and discusses various file formats and file compression as well as post processing for making digitised files accessible to the end-users.