The purpose of the paper is to describe several stages in a university library's approach to providing access to theses and dissertations, culminating in a decision to use CONTENTdm and its Dublin Core‐based metadata along with our ability to provide even wider access in the future through OCLC.
The university's treatment of theses and dissertations, from paper through a homegrown electronic system through CONTENTdm and beyond, is recounted in this paper.
Electronic open access to theses and dissertations increases their usage; a digital management software package streamlines their management and presentation.
Proprietary software has advantages over home‐grown approaches to digital library content.
This paper updates the findings in earlier articles about the use of CONTENTdm for ETDs and the use of OCLC services for metadata harvesting.
