Scanning Our Scholarship: The University of Florida Retrospective Dissertation Scanning Project

A multi-year project to digitize and make accessible thousands of dissertations written before 2001 by students at the University of Florida (UF) is currently being coordinated by staff within the UF Smathers Libraries Preservation Department.1 The ultimate goal of this project, called the Retrospective Dissertation Scanning Project (RDSP),2 is to make the entire UF dissertation corpus available in full text on the Internet. The UF Libraries believe that funding a project that allows UF dissertations to be more widely available to the world will enhance UF’s academic status as well as support the principles of Open Access. This article outlines the rationale behind the RDSP, discusses the workflow of the project and summarizes issues you might want to consider if you decide to take on a similar project.