Some people tend to predict that electronic publishing, like the world wide
web, will replace traditional paper editions as a medium of communication, that
this will be an electronic revolution that only can be compared to the
invention of printing itself. They line up a scenario where the normal way of
reading books in the future will be in front of a screen. This is, however, not
very likely. Electronic publishing will not replace books, but supplement them.
Anyone reading longer texts on the screen will probably subscribe to the
opinion that it is less readerfriendly than paper editions. Also when producing
a manuscript in a word-processor, most people prefer to print out a paper copy
to read the proofs on and do the final editing. The unusual reader-situation
created by the web, which few are accustomed to, viewing only a
small portion of the text, and on a monitor - not in a book, obstructs the
mind's ability to an overall perception.
The careful scrutiny and study of a manuscript is not that easily done in
front of a screen. It may not be pleasant to the eyes and the noise from the
disk-fan will often disturb the reader. The quick look to check on a passage a
couple of pages before, is made more difficult when scrolling up or down the
screen is required. Underlining essential parts and personal comments is harder
to do when reading a publication on a screen. Also, electronic manuscripts make
you dependent on having a computer within hands, causing the reading to be a
very stationary activity. Often, you only want to check one piece of
information in a book, and this is more easily done by reaching out for the
bookshelf and grab the actual book, than turning on you computer to find the
document on the net. This means that electronic publishing is probably no
competitor to paper books, at least not in the foreseeable future. If reading a
book from cover to cover is desired, this is best accomplished by buying it or
ordering it from a library.
This leaves us with the question what advantages electronic publishing in
general and student theses in particular really offer?
First, let me briefly outline the role of the thesis in Norwegian universities. The student theses in history are a result of two years work. It is an independent research work, supervised by a scholar. The length of the theses has varied from about a hundred to several hundred pages. The production of theses are considerable every year. Between 1945 and 1990, more than 2100 theses in history were accepted at Norwegian universities,[1] and in the autumn semester of 1995 the number was 71. These theses are important contributions to the historical research being done in Norway. Not only are the theses a major part of the volume of history works produced, they are also of a high quality and contribute to the development of Norwegian history, and some of the theses have become classic readings. When the student has finished the thesis, he or she hands in five copies of the thesis, one to the history department at the university that the student is graduating from, the other four are dispersed to the different university libraries. Though many of the theses are of interest to scholars, only very few of them have the commercial potentiality to persuade a publishing house to print it.
This
brings us to the main reason of putting student theses on the net; making these
historical works easily available. Because the theses are only available in few
copies, normally only one copy at each university library, they are not always
available when you need them. They cannot be obtained in bookstores, and
normally not in local libraries. To obtain a copy, approaching the author
itself is necessary. Important historical works are only published in small
numbers and therefore not easily available. As mentioned, the reason why such
theses are not printed, is not the quality, but the cost of production.
Electronic publishing is extremely cheap. Anything can be published, and it is
not unusual to feel lost in the abundance of web-sites offered. I guess it is
not an understatement to say that not all web-sites are evaluated as useful.
The extremely low cost of electronic publishing is offering a tremendous
opportunity to give this literature a wider audience. If acknowledged theses
only exist in a few copies, reading them on a screen is a far better
alternative than not being able to read them at all.
Not all accepted theses become "classic" readings. With the large number of
theses produced annually, quite a few students experience the misfortune of
having their theses stored in dusty libraries, only rarely being read by
anyone. Not necessarily because the work is of modest quality or without
interest, but because other historians and students are not fully aware of
them. By publishing the theses on the internet, they would have a potentially
large audience, also at the cost of practically nothing. Browsing the theses
for relevancy to your own work, is made a lot easier when they are available
within a few mouseclicks. The title of a book or theses may not always give a
representative picture of what the book is all about. When searching for
literature on a topic, you might miss some relevant books, because the title
was "misleading". Or, the "promising" title of a book may cause an interested
reader to visit the library in vain. By making manuscripts available on the
net, in full text, or at least in extensive abstracts, potential readers get a
good grasp of the contents of the book. If the thesis is found interesting, the
reader might consider the efforts of obtaining it, either at the library or
from the graduated student, worth while. It is more like being in a bookstore
where you can take out books from the shelves and have a closer look at them
before you decide to buy them.
So, two "academic" arguments can be lined up for publishing theses on the net:
Decreasing the efforts needed to access well-known theses due to a low number
of copies, and "spreading the news" of other theses available. I label these
reasons "academic" in the sense that providing historians access to theses help
them in their academic work. I would also like to emphasise the opportunity
electronic publishing provides to reach further than academic circles. The
internet may open new "markets" to the theses.
History
is a subject that attracts interest from outside the academic circles at the
university, and publishing on the web is a way of reaching people beyond those
circles. A great number of the theses deal with local history, and local
history is popular, also among history nonprofessionals. Every district or
region with some "self-respect" has its own genealogy and history book. Few
people locally are aware of the theses that has been produced about their own
region. With the public increasingly connected to the internet, either from
their own homes or via local libraries, the web can definitely be an essential
medium of disseminating knowledge, understanding and interest in history.
The public does not read the paper editions of the theses, they do not read
the historical journals, but they might have a look when the theses are brought
to their attention and when easily accessed. In Norway, scholars of history
traditionally write in a plain and intelligible language, comprehensible also
to non-historians, unlike the custom of most university scholars from other
traditions who tend to alienate non-academic readers through their use of
advanced vocabulary and notions.
Since putting the theses on the web, we have in fact experienced that the
theses attract local interest. Local and regional web-sites collecting links to
internet resources containing information about their area have discovered the
theses, and added links to theses dealing with local history from those region.
We also have an example where a thesis generated interest among the media. The
first thesis we put on the web discussed agricultural change in a part of
western Norway during last century. This caught the attention a local branch of
the Norwegian Broadcasting Company covering that area, which contacted the
student for a radio interview, focusing on this new media of publishing.
Naturally, these educative arguments for publishing on the net apply for
history works in general.
So
far, I have been discussing the benefits of making a copy of the paper editions
of the theses available on the net. The technology available through internet
also provides opportunities traditional paper editions cannot offer. Utilising
the web, you can go beyond a traditional thesis.
Multimedia effects, like sound and video, can be added. This, of course, would
be highly interesting in cases where audio and visual sources are central for
the topic in focus. An objection to adding such effects is that it requires the
reader to use powerful equipment, and the amount of data slows down the
transferring to an intolerable extent. But if interest of a certain thesis is
aroused, the trial of patience that the transferring process may cause, is more
endurable.
More useful, however, is probably the opportunities for hypertext that the web
provides. The reader can easily be guided to relevant sources, charts, tables,
pictures or additional literature within a few mouseclicks, that would burst
all limits within a paper edition. However, adding all these features to the
original thesis may not be a good idea, since the electronic version will
differ from the original thesis accepted. Any changes or adjunctions made to
the original theses should be clearly emphasised to the user. The opportunity
of frequent updating electronic publishing offers, thus bringing about several
different versions of the theses, is a universal problem for electronic
manuscripts, and both the server and the user end should be aware of this.
Still, within the limits of the original paper thesis, hyper-text possibility
provides smooth manoeuvring in the manuscript.
Interactive communication between authors and readers is more easily
encouraged by using the internet. By presenting theses, final or preliminary,
the authors expose themselves to instant comments and criticism that might give
new angles of incidence and questions to pursue. Most students appreciate this
kind of feedback. Such communication can be carried out privately using e-mail,
or publicly by adding web-conferencing applications - i.e. fill-in forms that
will upload comments on the web-site. The web then function as an electronic
seminar, independent from actual presence of the participants in time and
space.
The arguments presented for making theses available on the net, of course,
would apply for historical works in general, though the limited numbers of
copies of the publication is more typical to theses.
Hubbard, William H.: History Theses in Norway 1945-90: A Note on Numbers and Subject -Matter, Historisk Tidsskrift 1/1992, s. 3