The British Library and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in the US are making available 400 doctoral theses focusing on the Middle East, Islamic studies and related subjects online
The theses - which represent a wealth of UK postgraduate research into politics, culture and society in the Islamic world - can now be downloaded for free by scholars worldwide via the British Library's EThOS (Electronic Theses Online) service.
CRL is a consortium of some 250 research libraries in the US and Canada. It has sponsored the digitisation of hundreds of theses identified as being of special interest and value in the field of Islamic studies to make them available to academics worldwide.
Bernard Reilly, CRL president, said: "Scholarship today at the major UK universities is a cornerstone of global research. Access to that scholarship is of primary importance to the thousands of graduate and postgraduate researchers in the CRL community.
EThOS is a partnership between the British Library, the Higher Education sector and JISC, and it supplies electronic versions of theses published by 111 UK universities. The digitisation of paper theses is funded by the partner universities and the service administered by the library.
Joanna Newman, head of Higher Education, said: "One of the main aims of EThOS is to provide an international platform for doctoral research done at UK universities. Researchers will be able to access the very rich vein of research contained in the 400 theses that have been scanned and made available online thanks to CRL's support."
Newman added that the availability of these theses is a further boost to the existing strength that EThOS has in this subject area. "Earlier this year we announced the digitisation of nearly 1,000 theses through the DigiIslam initiative, funded by JISC.
"Our involvement with CRL underlines the success of the free-to-access model of thesis provision." The library is open to working with other organisations to make many more UK theses available in this way, thereby delivering huge benefits to research internationally.
Website: http://ethos.bl.uk/
IWR News Desk, Information world review 08/10/2010
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