EThOS opening access to UK theses

The UK's EThOS (Electronic Theses Online System) project will launch in September 2008.

'[The new system] will allow UK higher education institutions the opportunity to promote their postgraduate research and increase usage of their theses output,' said Kevin O’Leary, project manager of EThOS. 'This will be achieved by offering a single point of access to all UK doctoral theses – the first time this has ever been done - through harvesting e-theses from institutional repositories and by generating e-content through digitisation of paper-theses on a not-for-profit-basis.’

Currently in the UK, it can take up to six weeks from request to delivery if using a thesis for research. One of the values of this system is it will enable individuals to electronically search the system and access, from their desktop, the full text, in a secure format.

EThOS is based on a prototype that was developed by a project team funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Research Libraries UK (RLUK), the British Library and participating partners.