Update on dance thesis process

Hello thesis authors and thesis chairs,

I have an update on digital commons thesis submission guidelines and copyrights.  According to Kim Myers, the digital commons director, after publishing the work to digital commons, the thesis author has full agency and copyright to present a portion of the thesis or a development of the thesis as they wish.

The department and the college do not require a printed  copy of the thesis if the thesis is published in digital commons.

The department requires a printed watermark department copy if the author opts out of publishing their thesis to digital commons.

In terms of guidelines, Kim recommends the thesis author follow these  three steps in digital commons.

Go to:

1) Master Thesis Guidelines

2) Submission Guide

3) Submit Research

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dns_theses/

1) Master  Thesis Guidelines at

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dns_theses/thesis_guidelines.pdf

2) Submission Guide

http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dns_theses/dns_thesisguide.pdf

3) Submit Research

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/submit_research.html

Thesis chairs, the thesis author is required to write an abstract in digital commons. I recommend the chair review the abstract before the thesis author publish to digital commons.

The signature page is the gateway to publishing in digital commons. This page does not need to be printed on water mark paper.

Once the thesis has been submitted to digital commons by the author, the graduate director will  receive a confirmation email from digital commons. The graduate director will ask the thesis chair to review the submission in digital commons. Once the thesis chair has approved the submission in digital commons the thesis will be published to digital commons.

Meeting with Dance re: theses

On 9/1/15, I met with Maura Keefe and Pam Callen to discuss the retrospective and current thesis situation. Dance had been among the last to begin a collection, and late last summer they gave approval. They thought they wanted to scan the theses themselves, and received additional work study funding to do so, but in the end, none of them got posted. I set up a meeting with Pam, and serendipitously Maura joined in at the end and we discussed:

·         Pam will have student upload all scanned theses to a folder within the Master Thesis FC2 Dance folder.

·         Graduate student, instead of doing Quality Control on scanned theses, will use their expertise in the field to provide 4-5 keywords for each thesis in a spreadsheet, which will also be added to the FC2 drive.

·         Pam will provide Kim with any contact information for alumni, to make obtaining permission easier.

·         Maura will draft the email that will be generated when the thesis is uploaded, to notify advisor that the grade may be posted and forward it to Kim by the end of next week. She will also verify with the rest of the department that further curation is not necessary on the “old” theses – meaning if it’s in the library to take out, it’s available for posting. (Maura, I’m not sure whether that was a final decision yesterday, but I thought it was left that you wanted to check with the other faculty).

There is a step by step submission guide (http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dns_theses/dns_thesisguide.pdf ) posted on the site, but based on yesterday’s discussion I will need to change one sentence to reflect the submission – advisor notification – grade posting process.