ETD Leadership Award: Susan Copeland

John Hagan presented ETD 2008 co-chair Dr. Susan Copeland with the 2008 ETD Leadership Award. Dr. Copeland is largely responsible for ETD developments in the United Kingdom and she has influenced activities in this area in Europe. She has also worked extensively on international projects with the NDLTD and the American Library Association.

ETD Student Awards

The NDLTD ETD Awards for 2008 were already announced, yet warmly celebrated with the student thesis authors. One of the highlights was the presentation by Nursing thesis author Colin Macduff, who as part of his presentation re-enacted the "non-digital birth" of the print thesis, in order to make the point that his digital thesis deserved better neonatal care.

Thursday Evening Conference Dinner

The ETD 2008 conference delegates traveled by charter bus to the Ardoe House Hotel for a wonderful traditional Scottish formal dinner, followed by special entertainment: A Celtic musician trio performing Scottish country dance standards. They also insisted on audience participation, which resulted in the inevitable collision of cultures when the direction "inside foot, then outside foot" cannot be translated into left or right!

Plenary Session: Open Sesame!

John Hagan provided an overview of the longitudinal evidence he has gathered over the decade-long e-volution of the West Virginia U. ETD Repository program and it morphed into the institutional repository framework. The successful WVU program (yes, the graphic at left demonstrates the formula for that famous 146,000% figure you hear rumored at ETD meetings) still faces challenges to persuade faculty in the humanities that open access of creative theses is a winning proposition for students.

Poster Session!

Dr. Shalini Urs from the U. of Mysore in India presented a poster on an experiement to create an ontology based retrieval system for ETDs in the Vidyanidhi Digital Library.

Poster Session!

Antanas Streimikis from the Kaunas U. of Technology in Lithuania presented a poster session describing the Lithuanian eLABa ETD collection, its regulations, documentation, and software applications.

Poster Session!

Jane Aucock from the U. of St. Andrews and the Scottish Digital Libraries Consortium explains how her university developed and implemented their ETD deposit program.