From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 02:52:22 +0000


>Only if you are talking about dissertations made available without
>embargo immediately through the NDLTD network, Rick. The fact is that
>ANYONE could purchase a UMI print version right  upon its
>"publication"

But what that meant was ordering a copy and waiting for it to be sent by
mail. Assuming, of course, that you could discover the dissertation in the
first place using the existing print-based discovery tools. The relative
difficulty of discovery using those tools, combined with the inevitable
waiting period between order and receipt, are what made dissertations so
much less accessible during the print era than they are during the digital
era. The only people who had immediate access to print dissertations were
those who happened to be standing in the building that housed them.

>whereas the digital versions available through ProQuest
>require a subscription from a library, meaning that only patrons of
>those libraries have access. I don't believe that individual
>dissertations are sold as ebooks, are they?

They are. Anyone can go to http://dissexpress.umi.com, create a personal
account, and order dissertations either in print or for immediate download
in .pdf format. They¹re not free, of course, but they weren¹t free in the
print era either. The big difference in the digital era is that you can
find them quickly and easily and obtain a copy immediately. (Unless
they¹re embargoed, of course.) And if a dissertation is placed in an
institutional repository, as is more and more frequently the case, you
don¹t even have to buy it from ProQuest ‹ wherever you are in the world,
if you have internet access you have immediate and free access to the
dissertation.

Again: even if every dissertation in the world were embargoed for a year,
the fact that it would be easily discoverable, instantaneously purchasable
from ProQuest and/or (as is increasingly likely) available for download
from an IR at no charge after the embargo represents, on balance, a
radical increase in accessibility over what was the case during the print
era.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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