Obtaining full text – how we can (and can’t) help

However, as an enhancement to the standard online subscription, we are pleased to offer the following from 18 February 2008.

• For approximately 0.5% of entries, a ‘Link to full text’ button;
• For all other entries, a ‘How to obtain full text’ button;
• A new record type: ‘ETD-Advisory’ records.

About the ‘How to obtain full text’ button

Most of the half-million-plus Index to Theses records display this new button. Click on it to view a page about the university that awarded the higher degree in this case.

First the page tells you about any sources of ETDs (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) for this university.

Next it gives the web address of the university’s Library Catalogue.

Finally, it refers in most cases to availability from the British Library Theses Service . Where a BL item ordering number is known, this is automatically included on the displayed page.

At the foot of each ‘University Page’ is the date it was last edited, plus an email address for feedback. Pages will be reviewed and updated frequently.

About the ‘Link to full text’ button

Clicking on this button should lead you rapidly to the full text of the thesis via one of two routes:-

• A repository record, see example
• A departmental pointer page, see example

There are significant differences, as follows.

Repository records are compiled on a university-wide basis. They go into searchable databases running under specialist software such as Dspace and GNU E-prints. The URLs (web addresses) of each repository record can be expected to persist. (In many cases they take the form of persistent ‘handles’). Therefore we confidently link you to the item record, which in turn links to the full-text.

Departmental pointer pages lack the above reassuring characteristics. Their compilation is purely on the initiative of a specific department, or even individual researcher. The ETDs are not in general organised into databases, but listed sequentially on a page. The actual full-text may be hosted on a server at the university, but may be somewhere else, including the website of the author. Since such addresses are highly liable to change, we link you to the Departmental pointer page and no further, leaving you to negotiate and to decide for yourself what you think of the onwards link.

We anticipate that many ETDs referenced by Departmental pages will in due course enter repositories. Whenever that occurs we shall give you the repository link in preference.

How authentic and ‘safe’ are these ETDs?

There are digital documents described as ETDs all over the Internet, but we must be choosy about where we point you and you should in turn be aware of the following:-

In the case of ‘Departmental pointer pages’ we always prominently remind you that “the documents linked from the above page have NOT been endorsed as authentic or copyright cleared by the University Library or Academic Registry.”

Although no such warning is made in the case of institutional repository records, the degree of assurance offered by the authorities is not in practice uniform. Library endorsement in broad terms is likely, but not necessarily at an individual item level and should not be assumed unless asserted in the Repository’s FAQs etc. Be aware in particular that even repository ETDs may sometimes be a draft, rather than the completed, approved thesis. Again, refer when in doubt to the stated terms of the particular collection.

Here is what we can guarantee, in both Repository and Departmental pointer cases:-

We shall never reference an ETD unless a thesis by this author and with this title (or a sufficiently close variant thereof) either:-

• matches an existing Index to Theses entry -- sourced in the past from the university authorities.
• or has been recorded in the University’s Library Catalogue.

For instances of the second kind we have now introduced ‘ETD-Advisory Records.’

About ‘ETD-Advisory Records’

This new class of Index to Theses record is for when a doctoral ETD that matches a University Library Catalogue record is not ready to generate a full Index to Theses entry.

Instead we publish a stripped-down interim record which provides: author surname, title, university, year, and usually the first two or three sentences of an abstract. This comes with the warning that the information lacks the status of a full entry. See example.

In most cases an ETD-Advisory Record of this kind will be replaced by a full-scale entry once formal notification arrives from the university authorities. The length of time this takes varies considerably between universities.

More rarely, the ‘ETD-Advisory Record’ instead relates to a legacy item that was not advised at the time to ‘Index to Theses’ or for some other reason failed to be recorded. There may, for example, have been an initial embargo on publication, the subsequent lifting of which was missed. Only a small proportion of entries will be of this kind.