ETD Preservation Survey Results: MetaArchive and NDLTD Collaborate to Provide a Distributed Preservation Network for ETDs

Abstract

Because many universities now welcome or require ETDs from their graduate students, institutions must ensure that these works will be at least as available and enduring as they were when libraries and archives preserved the bound print volumes on their shelves. To this end, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations sponsored an online survey to help gauge the digital library community's interest in a distributed digital preservation network (DDPN) specifically for ETDs. Over 90 institutions responded to the survey in early 2008, including more than one-third who heard about it from the NDTLD and ETD listservs. Based on the enthusiasm expressed in the survey, the MetaArchive Cooperative (www.metaarchive.org), which successfully deploys a DDPN among six diverse universities in the southeastern United States, is opening the Cooperative's services and resources to the NDLTD. This paper describes survey responses and aspects of the NDLTD Preservation Strategy.