Honors Thesis Advisor Letter
Dear Honors Thesis Advisor,
We would like to tell you about the exciting digital repository service that we are making available to our honors thesis students again this year. We strongly encourage you and your students to participate in this pilot project.
As we did last spring, we are asking thesis students to submit digital versions of their theses, in addition to the traditional print version, so that we can digitally preserve them and, in most cases, provide wider and easier access to some of our best academic work at Wheaton via our digital repository.
Wheaton participates in a liberal arts college collaborative (NITLE) project using the open source software, DSpace, for the preservation and management of campus-produced intellectual content in what is called an "institutional repository." There are several benefits to students and to Wheaton when they post theses in Wheaton‚s "digital space," primary among them the potential for world-wide, any time access and attention to their work via Google and other search engines. You can view last year‚s theses and an experimental group of four from 2007 here: http://dspace.nitle.org/handle/10090/693
IMPORTANT: While authors retain their copyrights, there are caveats to consider when posting a thesis in a digital repository. Please consult http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Library/Resources/Dspace/Benefits.html for a description of benefits as well as important considerations for posting work. We encourage you to work closely with your students when they fill out the required permission form. This Honors Thesis Copyright and Distribution Permission Form, which outlines the various distribution options, must be filled out and signed by both the faculty advisor and the thesis student, and delivered to one of the liaison librarians by Monday, May 11. A copy of the form here http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Library/Resources/Dspace/docs/IR_consent_form_final.pdf is attached. Access decisions would best be made by informed faculty-student discussion -- we are ready to assist, as necessary. If you and your thesis student disagree about the best choice of distribution option, Wheaton College will adopt whichever of the two choices is more restrictive.
After permission decisions have been made and the form signed, students should email a digital copy of their thesis to Mason Brown or any liaison librarian by Monday, May 11. Instructions for submission and the permission form are accessible from Wheaton‚s Digital Repository web page: http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Library/Resources/Dspace/
The students who attended the honors thesis workshop on 4/23 are aware of this service and how to participate. Others will be hearing from us shortly.
N.B.: As you may know, honors theses have been bound, catalogued and permanently preserved in the Library‚s Archives and Special Collections since 1928. These theses are available on site during open hours, as well as through interlibrary loan when photocopy release forms have been signed by the student authors. We urge you to have a conversation with your student(s) about the implications of allowing interlibrary loan access, as well.
If you have any questions at all, please ask us. Encourage your students to contact us or their liaison librarian, as well. We hope you are as enthusiastic as we are about this opportunity to showcase Wheaton student scholarship and thank you for your support.
Zeph Stickney
Scott Hamlin
Margaret Gardner
April 27, 2009
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