Greetings; Our university is starting down this road and I am doing some background
research. The current issue of College & Research Libraries has an
article by Thomas H. Teper and Beth Kraemer, “Long-term Retention of Electronic
Theses and Dissertations.” It
raises several questions about the reliance upon PDF format as the “industry
standard”. While PDF is fine for
short-term access, its utility for long term storage for future migration into
new formats is questioned. The
authors doubt the wisdom of the assumption many have made, which is that, since
the U.S. Government is using it for many of their publications, it’s “good
enough for us.” Without going into much more detail about the article, I am interested
in finding out what the current practices are of universities and colleges that
offer this option. I have questions in two areas:
I have searched the list’s archives and found several inquiries, but few
answers. To forestall a rash of
“reply to me, too” postings, I promise to promptly post a summary of the
replies I receive. Thank you for your help. John C. Kelly Digital Initiatives Librarian Earl K. Long Library University of New Orleans |