Erasmus Staff Training Week @ ULiège Library

Presenter: Camille Carette, Digital Library Manager (Ecole nationale des chartes, France)

Abstract:

ThENC@ is a project aimed at simplifying access to theses written by students of the Ecole nationale des chartes in order to obtain their Archivist-Paleographer Diploma. These theses are valuable works in historical and philological sciences, but none of them are kept in the Ecole des chartes‘s library. Since 1961, they have been kept in the French National Archives and can’t be consulted without the authorization of their author, while the oldest are scattered in other institutions, or even private archives. For patrons, accessing these documents was quite the challenge!

Supported by the Domaine d’intérêt majeur (DIM) “Heritage and ancient materials” under the name “Open up academic heritage: ENC theses accessible online”, ThENC@ is both a digitization project and a project of metadata enrichment, in particular by indicating the location of these theses, when known, as well as the articles and works resulting from them.

Thanks to partnerships with other archives and libraries, more than 400 theses have been digitized to this day. Powered by Omeka S, the ThENC@ website acts as a digital library and provides records and metadata for all theses since 1849, as well as scanned images or searchable PDF (using OCR). This allows users to access previously difficult-to-access academic work online, without needing to request permission from the author.

One of the other key points of the project is its legal aspect. Depending on the archival documents or illustrations used in the thesis, its edition by a publisher, or the author’s wishes, not all theses can be communicated in open access. Thus, only library patrons are able to consult certain documents.

ThENC@ is a multi-layered project, that combines the search for documents across France, contact with authors, digitization, enrichment of bibliographies, or even legal aspects concerning open access. It shows, more than ever, the role of libraries in accessing old and recent academic works online.