GUIDE is the European Working Group of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). It is an open group, whose aim is to stimulate European doctoral Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) developments, by:
sharing good practice, and identifying common problems and solutions, especially on making doctoral e-theses openly available and accessible;
encouraging compatibility where appropriate;
identifying where limited joint activity would be beneficial, and planning and pursuing this joint activity;
preparing the e-theses domain to participate fully in the emerging wider interoperable network of European digital repositories, within an international context;
avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.
This 2-3 hour workshop (on Wednesday afternoon) will introduce GUIDE and its structure and current participants, describe progress so far, elaborate on GUIDE’s aims and objectives, invite feedback and dialogue, encourage sharing of activities and experiences, and agree a plan for the group to ETD 2008. To inform the discussion, there will be a presentation of practical developments to improve the availability of European ETDs, including
an interoperability demonstrator portal, specifically for doctoral e-theses in five European countries: Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Denmark;
the DART-Europe project, which is exploring the creation of a European model for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment.
The workshop will be of interest to anyone working to make European ETDs available.