Award-winning thesis available from Curtin

Curtin University of Technology PhD graduate Gianluca Paglia has been awarded the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering gold medal for his research into the structure of alumina. Dr Paglia's award-winning thesis has been processed by Curtin Library staff and is now available online via the Australian Digital Theses (ADT) program.

Curtin was one of seven Australian universities, with leadership from the University of New South Wales, to initiate the idea of the ADT in 1998. The program is aimed at establishing a database of digital theses produced by postgraduate research students and making this research available worldwide in order to promote Australian research to the international community. In 2002, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) agreed to transform this project into a sustainable program. All thirty-eight Australian university libraries are members of the ADT Program. In 2004, the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL) expressed interest in joining the ADT, with the University of Canterbury in Christchurch becoming the first New Zealand member. The number of active members is increasing steadily, with twenty-five of the thirty-eight CAUL members actively participating in adding content. All the universities use the same metadata standards to ensure compatibility. The common document format is Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) ensuring that the data is independent of the platform on which it is created and that a high quality printed version can be provided if needed.

During the last few years the Curtin Library staff have been sorting out the practicalities of processing the theses to make them available online, including issues of copyright and publishing, and the challenges of contacting previous graduates to retrospectively process theses. Currently digital deposit of theses is voluntary at Curtin; however, digital deposit will become mandatory for newly enrolling research students in 2005. The program at Curtin has grown to nearly 500 theses available online and approximately 3000 available throughout Australia. As Dr Paglia's thesis can attest, the quality of the research is world-class.

Curtin is pleased to note that ADT is gaining recognition as a new model for deposit and archiving of theses that takes into account the tools and technologies that students are now using to prepare their theses.

ADT Program
ADT at Curtin
Paglia Thesis

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