Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's graduate students have submitted theses and dissertations as digital documents since the spring of 1997. In that time more than 2,800 digital documents have been submitted and cataloged in the Virginia Tech library. More than 1,500 of these documents are available worldwide to scholars who conduct searches through the library online catalog, the scholarly communications web site (scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/), or through one of the many search engines available to web users.

Over the last two years a simple survey has been sent to 329 graduate alumni whose theses or dissertations have been available online worldwide for more than one year. The survey asked for information about the effect that making their document available has had on them. The survey also asked the graduates for comments about the digital thesis and dissertation process. There were 166 alumni who returned surveys.