Towards national etd database: responsibilities for libraries in Kenya

Abstract

This paper outlines the status of theses and dissertations publications emanating from Kenyan universities and efforts towards enhancing their visibility. It gives a background on the factors contributing to the growth of theses and dissertations which include the rise in number of universities, increase of approved graduate courses and the higher number of students graduating. It further outlines the responsibilities for libraries in management of theses and dissertations, and emphasizes the need for adapting new technologies to fulfill their roles. Librarian, as experts in collection development, information storage, cataloguing and dissemination, should take leadership role in management of information in any format as well as in planning and developing institutional repositories. Also collaboration with various stakeholder who are concern with local content such as Kenya Education Network (KENET) is emphasized. It advocates for establishment of national repository that takes a central role in management of the scholarly research publication. It describes an institutional, national and African-based repository (INAR) model for management and dissemination of ETDs. INAR is a 3-tier hierarchal setup that has the institutional repositories (IR) are at the bottom, then the National ETDs in the middle and the regional DATAD database at the top level. It concludes with outlining the role of national repository center. Keywords (Required) Theses, dissertations, ETD, institutional repositories, national repositories, information systems, metadata, universities,Kenya.