Author Archives: mohara

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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Tom Kibble’s Thesis digitised and made available online

Picture of Tom Kibble

Professor Kibble is currently an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London

During the summer graduations Tom Kibble will receive an Honorary Degree from the School of Physics & Astronomy for this work in Theoretical Physics. An Edinburgh graduate, Kibble contributed to the discovery of both the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs boson.

scanned image of handwritten formulas included in the thesis

All of the formulas in the the thesis were handwritten.

Ahead of the graduation ceremony in July the School requested the digitisation of his 1958 Thesis on Quantum Field Theory. As with all of our thesis scans the digitised copy will shortly be made available on ERA. In the meantime, the School of Physics & Astronomy will be using it for an exhibition on Kibble to coincide with the conferment of his honorary degree.

Maria O’Hara, Library Annexe Assistant

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Edinburgh physician’s thesis digitised for inclusion in Japanese Museum Exhibit

unedited image of a scanned page

The Carbon Pages were so thin a sheet of paper had to be placed behind each page before it was scanned

Earlier this year a digital copy of the 1909 thesis of Scottish born anthropologist and physician Dr Neil Gordon Munro was ordered by a museum in Japan. The digitised work will be included in an exhibition at the Yokohama History Museum in the city where Munro lived and worked as director of the General Hospital for much of his career.

The thesis was challenging to digitise as much of it was typed on thin, see-though carbon paper. Many of the pages had become wrinkled with age and some were handwritten.

As the University of Edinburgh begins exploring distance learning tools and deploying courses via Coursera this thesis, submitted from Japan, demonstrates the Universities rich yet largely invisible history of distance learning.

For a closer look at the completed digital copy on ERA go to: http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6685

Maria O’Hara, Library Annexe Assistant

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Edinburgh University introduces new Thesis Digitisation Service

Staff member using the Bookscanner at the Library Annexe

Charlie demonstrates our beautiful scanner.

In October 2012 the Library Annexe began operating a new Thesis Scanning Service. The service has proved popular with theses covering topics from historical re-enactment to earthquakes. And if anyone is fluent in Arabic and can tell us what Al-Hajeri’s (2007) 1200 page thesis is about – let us know!

Once scanned, a digital copy of the thesis is made available on the university’s institutional repository ERA where they are already seeing increased usage. The eventual aim is to make the entire thesis collection available online.

For more information on the service visit the Thesis Scanning Service webpage and to find out more about the University’s online repository check out the research already available on ERA.

Maria O’Hara, Library Annexe Assistant

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