The PhD digitisation project will complete the digitisation of the University of Edinburgh’s collection of roughly 25,000 PhDs. Approximately 10,000 PhDs are already accessible online through ERA, our institutional repository, and this project will digitise the remaining 15,000, thereby making unique Edinburgh research available to all.

The collection dates from the early 1600s to the present day and includes theses of varying sizes, styles and formats. Duplicate theses will have their spines removed using an IDEAL 4705 Guillotine and will then be fed through the 100-page-per minute Kodak i4250 document scanner. These copies will be recycled, freeing up around 500 linear metres of storage space in the Main Library building.

Unique theses will be scanned manually using a Copibook Cobalt flatbed scanner and any items in poor condition will receive conservation treatment.

Following scanning, digital images will undergo several post-processing procedures, such as de-skewing, cropping and de-blurring,and will also be OCR-ed to enable keyword searching. Fully processed files will be uploaded to ERA as searchable multipage PDFs.

All files are due to be made avaialble online by the end of 2018. For further information, please contact Gavin.Willshaw@ed.ac.uk