Conference - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation

The United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (USETDA) planning committee is pleased to invite you to our 2nd annual conference “USETDA 2012: A revolution in scholarship – A commonwealth of knowledge”, to be held June 13-15 in Quincy, Massachusetts, near downtown Boston, at the fabulous Boston Marriott Quincy Hotel. Discount lodging is available for only $149 per night. Don’t miss out on North America’s premier event on electronic theses and dissertations, institutional repositories and open access! The early bird discount registration rate of $129 has been extended through May 21, 2012. To register go to: http://www.usetda.org/?page_id=811 To view the conference website go to: http://www.usetda.org/?page_id=722 About the Conference: USETDA 2012 is designed for ETD professionals from graduate schools, libraries and information technology sectors who work with ETDs or ETD programs. Our focus will be on relevant and current ETD issues with an emphasis on sharing best-practices and resources within the U.S. The mission of USETDA is to provide information on best practices, develop and disseminate important information on ETD initiatives, support the development of state-wide ETD associations, bring ETD professionals together at the local level to network and improve ETD operations, educate and make others aware of ETD issues, and support the expansion of the NDLTD and other international ETD initiatives. Searching for innovative new ways to engage your students? Looking to increase efficiency by making technology work for you? Take your ETD program to the next level. This year’s program includes an outstanding lineup of speakers and presentations! Keynote presentations: Michele Kimpton – “DuraSpace – the future of repositories and the impact of the cloud” Michele Kimpton is Chief Executive Officer of DuraSpace and one of the founders of the organization. DuraSpace was formed in July 2009, and was the coming together of both the DSpace Foundation and Fedora-Commons organizations. DuraSpace is a not for profit organization that provides guidance and support for open source software projects DSpace, Fedora and more recently DuraCloud. Michele sets the strategic direction for DuraSpace with the executive team and members of the Board. Mrs. Kimpton was recently awarded Digital Preservation Pioneer by the NDIPP program at Library of Congress, you can find more detail at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners/pioneers/detail_kimpton.html. Prior to joining DuraSpace, Michele Kimpton was the Founder of the DSpace Foundation, a not for profit organization set up to provide leadership and support to the community of users of the DSpace open source software platform. The mission of the Foundation was to promote open access and preservation of the world’s scholarly works. The DSpace open source software platform is freely available to anyone or any institution, wishing to preserve, manage and provide internet access to their digital collections. Currently there are over one thousand installations world wide using DSpace software.Prior to joining DSpace, Michele Kimpton was the Director at Internet Archive for five years. In her role she works closely with National Libraries, Archives and Universities to provide technical expertise and services in web archiving. She has developed partnerships with several of these institutions to collaborate on web archiving activities, including being one of the founding members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium. Ed Fox – “NDLTD Innovations - ETD-db, Union Catalog and Future Developments” Ed Fox serves as Executive Director for NDLTD. He began work on ETDs in 1987 when some involved in SGML (a precursor to HTML and XML) were considering its application to dissertations. He received a B.S. from MIT in 1972 and then completed his M.S. and Ph.D. (1983) at Cornell University, working with Gerard Salton (‘the father of information retrieval’). At Virginia Tech since Aug. 1983, he is a Professor of Computer Science and is Director of the Digital Library Research Laboratory. He serves as a Board member of the Computer Research Association (CRA) and as chair of the steering committee of JCDL (ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries). He also serves on the steering committee of the International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries. Dr. Fox has been (co)principal investigator on over 105 grants/contracts. He has taught 75 tutorials in more than 25 countries. He has given 63 keynote/banquet/international invited/distinguished speaker presentations, about 150 refereed conference/workshop papers, and over 250 additional presentations. He has co-authored/edited 13 books, 96 journal/magazine articles, 46 book chapters, and many reports. Formerly he served as Chairman of the IEEE-CS Technical Committee on Digital Libraries (TCDL), and earlier as vice chairman and then chairman of the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR). He has served on hundreds of conference/workshop committees, and now serves on 10 editorial boards. Notable special interest sessions:books, computer and coffee Pre-conference workshops: Copyright – Host Gail Clement, Texas A&M University ($50 fee – includes primer) ETDs for Beginners – Host John Hagen, Renaissance Scholarly Communications (free) Plagiarism – Host Dawn Bilkowski, Ohio University (free) Special events: Wednesday evening opening reception on the Boston Marriott Quincy Hotel terrace overlooking Boston – includes appetizers and hosted bar. Thursday evening exclusive Conference Dinner BanAdams Banquet Hallquet, hosted bar and music at the Boston Marriott Quincy. Tours of downtown Boston and the region are available. Local Attraction Highlights: Adams National Historical Park, Quincy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston New England Aquarium Children’s Museum and Museum Wharf, Boston USS Constitution, Navy Yard, Boston Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth Harvard University Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown Boston Common and Public Gardens Complete information about local attractions in the Boston area is available online at http://www.usetda.org/?page_id=1364 We hope to see you in sunny Boston this June! Make plans now to experience the revolution of ETDs in 2012 in the Commonwealth of the Boston area.