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.
