From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:10:26 -0700 A Cautionary Tale" http://chronicle.com/article/Dissertation-for-Sale-A/132401/ This article from CHE reports a recent Ph.D.'s startled experience of finding that because he checked a box without thinking on the form with which he deposited his dissertation with ProQuest, his dissertation was now available for sale for $32 on the Nook reader. He objects, I think rightly, and I hope he can reverse the box-checking. But what has changed is interesting. It was always possible to obtain some or all of most dissertations by writing away to Ann Arbor. But the process was cumbersome. Intellectual access to the existence of a dissertation came through the indices to the bound volumes of *Dissertation Abstracts*; ordering the product was done by hand and surface post; and the product was at best a grainy print from a microfilm of a typescript. Few bothered. Now it is a matter of femtoseconds for the metadata about the dissertation to be searched by robots; a few more femtoseconds to create the availability in a given format; and the product available is searchable, handsome, and easily gotten. It's all gotten easier. And of course the original notion of a dissertation was that it was a published work of scholarship; the deposit of dissertation was technically "publication" (microfilm at Ann Arbor replaced the old practice of the privately printed dissertation paid for by the candidate), but I dare say few if any dissertation-submitters today think of the deposit as publication in any meaningful sense. What to do? At a minimum, candidates could use better information about their options and the consequences of their options. Jim O'Donnell Georgetown University