National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 61 | February 2003


Australian Higher Degree Theses Survey 2002

Higher degree theses emanating from Australia’s universities constitute a fundamental component of Australia’s research output, extending the boundaries of human knowledge and fuelling innovation and discovery.

In Australia, theses have traditionally been collected and catalogued by university libraries. With the introduction of the online National Bibliographic Database (NBD) in the 1980s, libraries were able to contribute catalogue records for theses in their collections to a single database. In tandem with Australia’s interlibrary loan network, this national database enabled researchers to search one system to discover, locate and access any theses held within Australian universities or more specifically access theses in a particular discipline.

Today the NBD includes records for Australian and overseas theses published in any format. With over 138 000 Australian theses records currently on the NBD and new records contributed as new papers emerge, it is still the best place to find Australian higher degree theses.

In 2002 the National Library surveyed Australian university libraries to determine the level to which they were contributing catalogue records for theses to the NBD. This survey aimed to both update and extend the information harvested from an earlier 1996 survey. Recognising the increasing trend within academia to produce theses in digital or electronic format, the 2002 survey asked libraries to indicate if they contributed cataloguing that described both their print and digital format theses. The survey also sought to determine why libraries failed to record theses on the NBD and to identify other metadata repositories that libraries were using to record theses information, as well as any trends for the future.

The survey findings were positive and reinforced the fact that libraries are still committed to reporting their theses publications on the NBD. Nearly all university libraries contributed records for their print theses to the NBD and the majority of those universities accepting digital theses also provided the NBD with records. The survey also highlighted that many university libraries (almost 70 per cent) did not yet collect or receive electronic theses into their collection.

Survey responses also confirmed the increasing trend in the capture and delivery of digital theses supported by ventures such as the Australian Digital Theses Program <www.library.unsw.edu.au/thesis/adt-ADT/info/info.html>, established to provide a distributed and web-accessible database of digitised post-graduate theses. Libraries are also expanding their traditional mechanisms of identifying, harvesting and delivering theses, incorporating new standards such as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and the Open Archives Initiative protocol.

The final report of the 2002 Survey of Australian Theses Contributions to the NBD can be viewed at <www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/austthesessurvey.html>.
—Bemal Rajapatirana

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