Access to UC students theses

[Alison Wain <alison@orac.net.au>]

I was very disappointed to see in the last AICCM newsletter the
announcement that access to the third year theses produced by University
of Canberra students was no longer to be made available to the
conservation profession. I know that I and many other conservators have
regularly asked for copies of theses that were relevant to problems or
topics raised in our workplaces and as the students have often done some
of the most recent work on the various topics, the research in the these
was often a very useful shortcut to further reading or research.

I can quite understand that with the loss of the secretarial position in
the department, it is no longer possible to provide the staff time
needed to produce and send copies of the theses. However the stated
alternatives are that good work will either be published or a student's
adress given out so that professional conservators can contact them
directly. I feel that these measures are not realistic for the following
reasons:

* students' work is almost never published. After the end of the third
year, as they move house and try to get jobs, just about the last thing
any student wants to think about is their thesis. Many of them are also
very diffident about their work and need significant encouragement (and
stamina) to work it up into a publishable paper. At the same time the
university staff have a new year and a new set of projects to worry
about, and have limited time to devote to past students' publishing
ambitions.

** after finishing the course most students typically move around the
country doing short contracts. It is unlikely the university will be
able to keep current addresses for them, and I would query whether it is
not an invasion of privacy to have their addresses given out anyway.

I am particularly disapointed with the university's decision as there is
an alternative way of making the information available with minimum time
and effort on everyone's part. Most of the theses will by now be
produced on word processors anyway - if as part of their submission at
the end of the year the students were required to submit a disk/disks
containing the text of their project, I could easily upload the theses
onto the Ozcons Website. The student only has to supply an electronic
copy, I only have to do a small amount of data transfer, disclaimers
would be placed on the Web site to say that these were students'
projects and as such the information was neither referreed nor
guaranteed, and anyone interested in a particular project only has to
print it off the net. (Graphics incidentally would be something I would
have to think about - but I think any graphics already in electronic
form could be catered for - possibly in a thumbnail format if nothing
else. If students wanted other graphics to go on they could perhaps scan
them into an electronic format and place them on the disk with the rest
of the information.)

I have previously suggested this solution to the University, but they
preferred to adopt the strategy which has just been announced in the
Newsletter. I remain disappointed with this solution and would like to
know what other people think about the situation.

Alison