I've decided that my dissertation will be on electronic theses and dissertations, and, as usual, I'm looking to shake the canoe a bit. To my mind, producing a "vanilla" .pdf thesis or dissertation is hardly better than just printing and binding the damn thing; I hate the proprietary format with a passion--and, besides, Adobe reader almost always crashes my Firefox. It appears that the first battle I'll have is with people who can't get beyond using a commercial product, especially when the corporate lords are just so nice and considerate (Look, they're letting us use this for pennies)...Blech!! As in "13 CDs for a penny"...
Open source is just too insecure...:-P
On the other hand, the few "macademia nut" humanities ETDs I've seen leave a lot to be desired. They have clumsy interfaces and appear to have been constructed by people with a near-fatal lack of website design skills. The FLASH files are clunky and slow, database use is rare, and Lord, if I see another "avant garde e-poet" ETD I'm going to launch a crusade for traditional print ETDs in the humanities. This stuff is el diablo!
Anyway, I was wondering if any of you know of any GOOD ETDs in the humanties that are (a) innovative and (b) well-designed. I'm particularly interested in ETDs that take advantage of databases, scripting languages, or, heck, even FLASH (though MM is proprietary and VERY expensive). I know of a few, but I'd really like to see ETDs that you all admire and think serve as good models for future authors.
Electronic Dissertations
I think a full database backed solution would be quite complex and also would have the problem of being difficult to maintain historically.
One idea is to see what can be done with just default web features such as HTML. After that I think the next step would be a Wiki. It seems like the perfect tool for that type of publishing. I am not sure if you are interesting in allowing commentary on the dissertation, but this would be one way to enable that.
Another interesting idea might be to publish everything as XML and use XPath to query the XML data instead of using a database. Jon Udell has explored this.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/01/19.html#a891
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/01/30.html
don't laugh, but
try drupal's collaborative book function. you could put up a site, link in pages external to the site as you decided to (reorganizing whenever), than automagically generate the "printer friendly version." take a copy of that, open it in open office, through in some style changes, and you have the traditonal diss that your committee wants.
to make it more non traditional, you open up commenting on some/any pages to include outside suggestions and feedback. so the definitive text becomes the online version, rather than the pdf, which is just the two-dimensionally thinking text that serves what the university wants.
gotta run, so don't pound me too hard for this half-baked idea :)
There's Gotta Be...
OSU has embraced PDF ETD whole heartedly. One thing I don't understand is that the college of humanities is in the midst of a campaign to create an extensive XML database of digital documents. Seems to me the two aren't really all that compatiable. I'm really curious as to why some form of html won't work. Its highly scalable, etc.
PDF Suits
I've been asking myself that question a lot too, Scott. The #1 problem is that most faculty still think of theses and dissertations as "been there, done that" exercises; final drafts that can be stored and archived as a finished product. What they aren't taking into consideration is the idea of an ETD as an ongoing, dynamic, or collaborative project. There are plenty of potential ETDs that simply couldn't exist as a PDF stored on a U server or tucked away on a DVD-ROM in a library collection.
The #2 problem is that the PDF guys really know how to sell their product. They're basically offering universities a trojan horse. Look, we'll let you use our widely popular proprietary format to store and present ALL of your ETDs, and we'll even give you some free copies of Adobe Acrobat(R). It's really just a scheme for them to eventually yank the rug out and start making big money when Adobe Acrobat is as common on campuses as Microsoft Word.
I don't care what Adobe claims, universities are making a grave mistake by choosing ANY proprietary format to store its ETDs. I'd rather have students submit ETDs as ASCII text than .PDF.
Really, though, I think the U ought to just offer the student sufficient server space (with a CGI-BIN, thank you!!) and let the student create a ETD with his/her weapon of choice. It'd also help if the U would offer plenty of classes on basic and advanced web design; everything from basic XML to working with databases. I think that's the way we're going to get really innovative ETDs.