TO: Students writing theses

FROM: Dr. Lisa Spiro, Executive Director of Digital Scholarship Services

DATE:

SUBJECT: Making available theses through the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive

Congratulations on writing an undergraduate honors thesis! I know that you’ve worked hard on your thesis, so I’d like to offer you the opportunity to ensure that your work has the deepest impact. Too often only a few people read undergraduate research projects--perhaps an adviser or members of a seminar. However, universities such as Duke, Wesleyan and Vanderbilt make available undergraduate theses online, enabling them to have a much broader reach. By sharing your thesis online, you can contribute to public knowledge, raise the visibility of  your department, and make it easy for friends, family and future employers to access your work.

Sharing your work through the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive (RDSA) offers several benefits. Your work will be housed along with Rice theses and dissertations, articles by Rice faculty, and other rich collections, so it will be likely be easier to discover and will be affiliated with a top institution. The Rice Digital Scholarship Archive generates a permanent URL for each item, guarding against broken links. In addition, Fondren Library ensures the long-term preservation of our collections by backing them up both locally and through a national digital preservation service. By making your thesis available through RDSA, you can demonstrate the value of the Rice education that you have received.

Contributing your thesis to the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive is easy. Visit https://library.rice.edu/requests/deposit-thesis and fill out a brief form. You’ll need to agree to the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive’s licensing agreement, which states that you as author retain copyright but grant RDSA “the non-exclusive right to reproduce, translate … and/or distribute your submission…. worldwide.” You would also certify that the work is your own and that you have not infringed copyright (see http://libguides.rice.edu/c.php?g=436708&p=2996921 for guidance on using images in theses). Then attach the final version of your thesis as a PDF. Once the library has completed the submission process, we’ll send you a URL that you can then share.

I hope that you are interested in making your thesis available through RDSA. Please contact me with any questions.

Sincerely,

Lisa Spiro, Ph.D.

lspiro@rice.edu

713-348-2480