The ETDplus Project is the latest in a series of collaborative multi-institution projects studying and documenting best practices for lifecycle management of ETDs. ETDplus is researching and building tools to help manage a growing challenge in ETD programs: the creation and submission of data associated with theses and dissertations beyond the simple PDF format. Ranging from research data sets to video installations, from websites to music recitals, these digital objects are pieces of intellectual work that cannot be captured in words alone. Funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the project is producing guidance documentation, workshop materials, and software tools for students and staff to use in managing these complex digital objects. It is a partnership between Educopia Institute, bepress, Carnegie Mellon University, Colorado State University, Confederation of Open Access Repositories, Indiana State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Oregon State University, Penn State University, Purdue University, ProQuest, University of Louisville, University of North Carolina School of Library and Information Science, University of North Texas, University of Tennessee Knoxville, and Virginia Tech University.

On the author:

Dr. Martin Halbert is Dean of Libraries and Associate Professor at the University of North Texas. He also currently serves as President of the Educopia Institute, an educational nonprofit that advances the well-being of libraries by fostering the advancement of shared information systems and infrastructures, and was one of the founding partners of the US National Digital Preservation Program. Halbert has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary liberal arts from Emory University; his research examines the future of digital scholarship and research library services. He has served as principal investigator for grants and contracts totaling more than $6 M during the past six years, funding more than a dozen large scale collaborative projects among many educational institutions. Halbert has previously worked for Emory University, Rice University, UT Austin, and the IBM Corporation.