NDSU Libraries has partnered with the Graduate School to make recently published theses and dissertations available online. More than 1,700 digital publications from fall 2011 to spring 2018 have been uploaded to the NDSU Repository and are openly accessible.
The process of uploading the documents began in September 2017, as part of a collaborative effort between Dan Nygard of the Graduate School, Steve Beckermann of Information Technology Services and NDSU Libraries personnel, including Amy Reese, Michael Longtine, Jenny Grasto, Rex Hughes and Dustin Mohagen.
“There were a lot of documents to catalog in the system, and we were able to keep everything organized and focused throughout the project,” Nygard said. “Working with these documents, just being able to see the work done each year, gave me a real sense of what our graduate students accomplish.”
The NDSU Repository hosts several forms of documents, including campus publications, regional interest documents and faculty research when permitted by the publisher. Graduate student theses and dissertations cover a variety of subjects to include agriculture, engineering, the humanities and other areas of scholarly interest.
Student research can be accessed by visiting https://library.ndsu.edu/ir/ and selecting the Research and Digital Scholarship collection. Theses and dissertations have been grouped with their associated departments. Contact the NDSU Repository Team for help locating a specific thesis or dissertation.
In addition to currently available student research, the NDSU Libraries will upload future research documents as they become available. Library staff members also are working on a project to scan and digitize student research published before fall 2011, which includes 11,285 individual documents.
“Print versions of student theses and dissertations have been shared with the community for years,” said Hughes. “It is exciting to provide digital access to student research, because these documents demonstrate the value of research being conducted at NDSU.”
Alumni of the NDSU Graduate School may contact the NDSU Repository Team to request an expedited scan of a past thesis or dissertation.
“We are proud of the work our students carry out under the direction of the professors who supervise and mentor them, and we know that their ideas and contributions will be of interest for companies, researchers and the general public. This repository will allow everyone to access their results with ease,” said Claudia Tomany, dean of graduate and interdisciplinary studies.
Student research published in the NDSU Repository is protected by university policy 190, Section 6.2, regarding student intellectual property – “Upon enrollment at NDSU, a graduate student hereby grants a royalty-free perpetual license to the institution for the reproduction and public distribution, including by electronic means, of copies of the student's thesis, paper or dissertation.”
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