50,000 full-text theses now available on EThOS

EThOS announce that just over 50,000 full-text theses are now available on EThOS, the E-Theses Online Service. The 50,000th thesis to be added was “The process of writing using a computer: a study of first school children”, written by Charalabos-Babis Bakopoulos from University of East Anglia. The thesis, written in 1991, was added to EThOS after being digitised at the BL in response to a request submitted through EThOS.

The milestone comes at a significant time for EThOS who are now able to share further news of some changes that aim to move EThOS onto a more sustainable footing. As many participants will already know, after extensive consultation and some challenging times during 2010, a new EThOS Governing Board has been established which will now guide the development of the EThOS service and oversee the introduction of a new shared service business model between the HE community and the British Library.

The Board has now appointed an EThOS Service Manager – Sara Gould – to work with HE and the BL to develop the detail of any changes and roll out the new model. This 1-year role is generously funded by JISC.

The Board has also now approved a number of high-level changes, the most important of which is the introduction of a membership fee for all HEIs. This shared contribution will allow EThOS to implement all of the upgrades and improvements to the existing service and bring in the additional elements that have been discussed over the last year or so.  

The detailed membership fees and other arrangements are being shared in an EThOS Update e-newsletter sent to all EThOS contacts today. If you are the EThOS manager for your institution but have not received the Update, please contact sara.gould@bl.uk.

Please be assured that the current EThOS service continues completely as normal, and we will communicate any changes as they occur. If you have EThOS digitisation funds held with the BL, you do not need to do anything: the service continues as usual and no changes are planned for HEIs that continue to use the BL’s digitisation service. If you have questions about EThOS, please continue to send them to ethos-help@bl.uk.