IPSWICH, Mass. — June 26, 2015 — EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and the H.W. Wilson Foundation are expanding their partnership with the goal of making searching for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) easier and more open.
In 2014, the two organizations created American Doctoral Dissertations which contains indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933-1955. Under the expanded partnership, the H.W. Wilson Foundation has agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present. The goal is to create a single portal for ETDs which can be added to university profiles and accessed online at www.opendissertations.com.
H. W. Wilson Foundation President Harry Regan says the overall vision is to provide a free dissertations product that will be updated continually. "Providing a single access point for decades-worth of scholarship from leading institutions will help raise the profile of these important pieces of work and improve the findability of the information they contain."
EBSCO Senior Vice President of Business Development, Mark Herrick says by expanding the database beyond 1955, EBSCO is providing a better way to access scholarly writing. "In addition to including content from the universities currently in American Doctoral Dissertations, EBSCO is also looking to include universities that have strong institutional repositories for electronic theses and dissertations. Academic libraries can easily add the database to their EBSCOhost profiles. American Doctoral Dissertations is included in EBSCO Discovery Service so those customers with dissertation records in American Doctoral Dissertations can link from the database to ETDs in their institutional repositories." In addition, the availability of the database on the open Web (www.opendissertations.com) will provide independent scholars a single resource to identify the location of dissertations from top universities related to their research.
The EBSCO Support Site contains information to help librarians learn more about adding American Doctoral Dissertations to EBSCOhost profiles.
About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 8,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 700,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.
About the H.W. Wilson Foundation
The Foundation was established by Halsey W. Wilson in 1952 to support the needs of company employees and retirees. Requests for funding were reviewed by the Board of Directors. By 1957, the Foundation directed its funding efforts to support libraries, library associations, historical societies, cultural programs and scholarships for library and information science programs accredited by the American Library Association. Major donors to the Foundation included Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Wilson, and the H.W. Wilson Company. http://thwwf.org/