Not posting a poor quality paper

[Jason Skoog]

Hello,

We receive our masters papers directly from faculty.  One faculty has requested that a student's paper not be posted online due to it's poor quality.  This is basically the equivalent of a dissertation, but I've been told to refer to them as "masters scholarship" since for some reason they aren't technically dissertations.

Does anyone know if this is a policy that can be set by each institution?  My concern centers around determining what is required for accreditation.  I was told that a major reason why we collect and post papers is for accreditation.

Thank you,

Jason Skoog

Archivist and Systems Librarian
Viterbo University, La Crosse, WI
608-796-3262

[Allen Clayton]

Hi Jason,

It appears to me that you are being asked to cover up a mistake in passing the thesis by the faculty committee.  Once you receive it from the faculty your job is simply to post the thesis, not to be involved in decisions about the quality of it.  Since it was the faculty's job to decide if the work was worthy of a degree I suggest that you refrain from posting the thesis until the committee discusses the issue with the Graduate Dean and you receive clear instructions about what to do from his/her office. As the ETD manager I would encourage you to insist that the repository at least post the metadata for the thesis with possibly a link to your ILL department to request a copy.

Allen Clayton

Digital Projects Librarian

The University of Texas at Dallas

972-883-2949