We need to get these into West-Collection

English Department Senior Theses from Writing and Literature Majors

John Briggs has proposed that the theses English Department Seniors write for their senior seminar should be collected and made available in/by the library for future access. After some preliminary discussions some ideas have emerged to create a process to help accomplish this goal.

I would like to hear from anyone who wishes to contribute to the planning or implementation of this project. Please look at an initial draft of areas of consideration, with focus on format, access, project size, schedule, privacy/permission, distribution, storage, and backup. For any other issues that need attention, please add them to the outline.

Format:

Electronic files, probably pdf, to be submitted in Word and converted to pdf. The submissions would flow to the library from the faculty teaching the courses each Spring. Paper copies should not be an option, if possible.

Access:

The theses would be required to have a proscribed(i.e., length, style) abstract. Several other points of information will be required such as the author, title, course number/name, date(term/year), and some keyword or descriptive element(details to be worked out). A database with these elements, and others, as this idea develops, will allow interested readers to locate individual theses that may be of interest.

Privacy/Permission:

A short form to be included in the submission granting permission, by the author, to allow their theses to be read. For those authors with concerns about access, requirements for the file to be pass worded, and permissions to be sought prior to access would be created and set in place.

Storage and backup:

ERes, with duplicates stored on the K drive/Library/�

Project Size:

The initial group from Spring '03 is around 25. Each subsequent year may see a modest increase

Schedule:

Submissions would occur after the end of the Spring Term. Work by the Access Services Team to associate the submissions with the appropriate pages in ERes will be processed over the Summer following the submission, and completed prior to the beginning of the next Fall term.

R.Gladstone draft - 7/23/2003

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Automation --brian, 2003/07/23 17:03 EST
I think we can "automate" this whole thing. The student could fill out a web form with all the necessary data which will be added to a MySQL? database when the form is submitted. We can use the basic Dublin Core metadata elements for metadata. Along with the abstract and metadata the user will submit a word (or html or text) and the machine will convert them to PDF. Search screens and resutls screens will have to be built to provide access and an interface. The main problem with this is that we need to have a machine to put them on.

Access to English Senior Theses --Jenny, 2003/07/24 09:39 EST
This is a excellent proposal and I would be glad to help in any way I can. One thought is that it might be nice to have web links to the theses/file from the English Department website. I would hope that there would be space for the files on one of the campus/UC machines.

PDF vs. HTML --brian, 2003/07/24 09:51 EST
Is there any advantage in using PDF vs. HTML? HTML is flexible, easy, fast. PDFs are only good if the material is to be printed and only then if it has a complex layout. PDFs make it harder to get at the text of an article (this could be desirable), make it hard to search. Would we want to index the content of these papers?

RE: PDF vs HTML --Veronica, 2003/07/25 09:38 EST
It was my understanding from Russ that content was less important than style in looking at these papers. There may be some students getting content ideas, but mostly they will be looking for formatting, citation styles, etc.

Style Guides --Brian, 2003/07/25 11:57 EST
Is there a Style Guide available from the English department for these papers? A syle guide gives authors direction. I'm sure we have copies of the APA and MLA sytle guides as well at the Chicago Style Guide.

comments:

We have the theses! -- Thu, 19 May 2005 15:42:28 -0400 reply
John Briggs dropped off a box full of theses from 2003/2004. The 2005 will be coming on CD soon.