INFORUM 2006 - 12. Annual Conference On Professional Information Resources

Fulltext Databases of Theses and Dissertations – Free Access to Valuable Source of Specialized Information [contribution]

Author: Věra Jurmanová Volemanová,  Masaryk University in Brno - Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic

Fulltexts

Abstract

Since the 1st January 2006 czech universities are forced by the law to make final theses and dissertations accessible for public, through a database of theses and dissertations. Despite the problems with copyright comes sooner or later the time when universities really make theses and dissertations public. In the case of electronic form of theses and dissertations publication there would be free and unlimited access to these valuable and unique documents; grey literature would definitely lose one of its parts and Czech republic would finally get closer to the habits which are particulary in the USA and in west European countries absolutely obvious. The process of creating the theses and dissertations databases have begun at certain czech universities few years ago. So, the first examples of fulfilment of the law are expected soon.

The aim of this paper is to describe new area of free and open resources of knowledge, inform about databases of theses and dissertations at several czech universities (especially at Masaryk university in Brno) and give a brief overview of contemporary czech law related to this question.

About the author

The author has graduated from Information Science and Librarianship, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno in June 2004. Since August 2004 is employed as a college tutor at the Department of czech literature and libraranship, MU. Between March – December 2004 has worked as a librarian in Central library of Faculty of Arts, MU Brno. Since 2004 is also the member of Electronic Theses and Dissertations Working Group (at the Association of Libraries of Czech Universities). One of her long term activities is a copyright question in librarianship.