Virginia Tech is the founding university in the electronic theses and dissertations effort and in 1997, the university was the first to require its students to prepare ETDs. Over the course of 13 years ETD programs have now been implemented in hundreds of colleges and universities around the world. The one millionth ETD milestone indicates that ETD implementation is beginning to reach a critical mass. As of April 2010, the record count reached 1.6 million, though there may be some duplicate records.
The NDLTD is an international non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the creation, dissemination, use, adoption, and preservation of digital theses and dissertations. The NDLTD assists students and universities in using electronic publishing and digital libraries to more effectively share knowledge in order to unlock potential benefits worldwide. The NDLTD also promotes student efforts to transform the genre of the print dissertation through the use of innovative software to create cutting edge hypertext/multimedia ETDs.
The NDLTD (www.ndltd.org), OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, www.oclc.org), VTLS (www.vtls.com), and Scirus (www.scirus.com) maintain and provide access related to the NDLTD Union Catalog (www.ndltd.org/find), of ETDs available in institutional repositories around the globe.
The NDLTD's programs help universities improve graduate education through more effective sharing of research; enhance the potential value of intellectual property; increase the speed at which research methods and results are shared; and participate in digital libraries, by collecting, cataloging, archiving, and making accessible electronic theses and dissertations worldwide.
The NDLTD also directly assists graduate students by teaching the value of electronic publishing and digital libraries. Through the actions of its international Board of Directors, committees, and working groups, as well as an annual international conference, NDLTD provides guidance, standards, and technology supporting submission and other digital library services tailored to electronic theses and dissertations.
The ETD and open access movements promoted by the NDLTD have enhanced scholarly communications, making valuable information and knowledge available at the touch of a button.
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