In the Library at the University of the West of England we have been dealing with electronic student dissertations since 2003. In the course requirements students are asked to submit an electronic copy of their dissertations for the library. The faculties then select which ones are sent to us usually only examples of good practice. The student must submit a signed consent form with the dissertation (we will not accept any in the library without this). We ask that they be sent in Word or PDF format. We then add a copyright header sheet which included the following
Please note that students and staff may not:
* Copy and paste material from the dissertation/project
* Print out and/or download a copy of the dissertation/project
* Redistribute (including by e-mail), republish or reformat anything contained within the dissertation
We convert the dissertations to PDF and add security to prevent copying and pasting, editing printing and downloading. These are then uploaded to an area of our VLE accessible only to UWE staff and students. The Adobe security is not foolproof but together with the disclaimer it seems to be working here and we have being doing this for 8 years.
Anne Petrie
Digital Collections Officer
University of the West of England, Bristol
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