Tag Archives: ERA

Beautiful Bindings

thesis on rickets 1 thesis on rickets 2

As part of our Thesis Scanning Service, when we come across a request for a thesis that has beautiful binding we make sure to scan and include these images in the digitised content.

A recent example of this is the beautiful golden marble effect shown above on William David Osler’s ‘Thesis on Rickets’ awarded in 1896.

The digitised copy of this thesis is available for download from the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA), Edinburgh University’s digital repository of original research produced at The University of Edinburgh.

Download and view ‘Thesis on Rickets’ from the ERA archives’.

More information on our digitisation service can be found on our Thesis Scanning service page.

Stephanie Farley (Charlie), Library Annexe Assistant

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Thesis Scanning Service attracts international attention

Given the global impact of research at the University we probably shouldn’t have been surprised when our little Thesis Scanning Service attracted attention around the world – but we were.

To date roughly half of all orders received have come in from outside the UK. Predictably, English speaking countries such as the United States and Australia account for the majority of requests. The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in Chicago has even become our first repeat customer; ordering four theses scans in as many months. Each thesis scanned for the CRL will eventually be made available to their users via their digital repository. For those unaffiliated with the CRL, however, they will also be available for anyone to download on our own digital repository, ERA.

Not all orders are coming in from the English-speaking world; requests have come in from countries as far afield as Japan, Israel and South Korea. While the majority of requests have been made by academic researchers, some have been for exhibitions or even family history enthusiasts. Currently, requests have been received from 13 different countries and we hope to see this number increase in future.

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The new Annexe Thesis Scanning Service proves popular

 

picture of a number of black-bound theses piled up in a cupboard over two shelves

The orders for thesis scans are definitely piling up.

After 9 months and 62 orders the pilot stage of the Thesis Scanning Service is over. When the service started I don’t think any of the team anticipated the impact it would have on our workload. We naively expected to be scanning one thesis a week but, with an average eight scan requests coming in each month, it isn’t unheard of for us to deliver five completed scans in one working week. This far exceeded our expectations and we have been pleasantly surprised by the uptake. In fact, now that the service is up and running, each of us devotes up to half of our working day to digitisation.

The project has highlighted the demand for digital copies of theses. Although only a handful have made their way onto ERA thus far those that have are benefiting from increased visibility and usage. Since being made available on ERA, Lance Whitehead’s 1994 thesis on the Clavichords of Hieronymus and Johann Haas has been viewed over 100 times and downloaded almost 40. On average the theses that have been available via ERA for more than 6 months have been downloaded 23 times each.

As more materials are added to the ERA database, their visibility on search engines such as Google Scholar will only increase, allowing our worldwide audience access to Edinburgh’s Research. Despite some of the interesting moments and challenges along the way, we feel the service has been a great success and all of us on Team Annexe are looking forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

Maria O’Hara, Library Annexe Assistant

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