Maturing towards the digital library: implementation of the electronic thesis and dissertation program

HERRERA, LUIS; FERRACUTTI, VICTOR; PICCOTTO, NATALIA

Sydney

Simposio; 8th International Symposium on Electronic Theses & Dissertations. ETD2005: evolution through discovery; 2005

The Scientia, The University of New South Wales.

Thesis and dissertations constitute the foundation and evidence of the ingenuity and scientific production in universities. In the latinamerican region various actions have taken place attempting to bring into a proper perspective, aided by current technologies, all of the efforts put into years of research, teaching, and human resources development at universities and research institutions.The implementation of Open Source software for the development of digital libraries of thesis and dissertations is recent in the region, and particularly in Argentina. Current technologies favor integration and cooperation but national and regional policies are in the process of discussion and definition while there is a current of Governmental regulations which tend to support the Open Source paradigm as a valid alternative for continued improvement and sustainable growth.In this context, the administration of the ?software process? has become critical. As a result, the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was adopted.At the beggining of 2001 the Biblioteca Central of the Universidad Nacional del Sur started to use web technologies to provide improved access to the various information resources in higher education. The first electronic thesis were published using the TEDE Open Source software furnished by IBICT (Instituto Brasileiro de Información en Ciencia y Tecnología), receiving training and support from the ETD-Net project by UNESCO.During 2003, other institutions of the public sector in the research and teaching area, joined the Universidad in the project of strengthening and giving renewed impulse to the electronic thesis and dissertations project.We present here the preliminary results of the project in this set of critical success factors?interinstitutional cooperation?Standars adoption?Attitudes of users co mmunity?Software tools and processes.