Open Access Online PhD Theses is highly connected to the purpose of universities and the value of scholarship. It advances the university's interest and fulfills its mission to share the knowledge it produces. In India the first university to take initiative in this regard is Mahatma Gandhi University. The launching of the Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU) Open Access Digital Archive of PhD Theses (www.mgutheses.org) in 2008 by Former President of India H E Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam and the live presence of the archive in the web for the last two years is a success story among Indian universities. It is accessible from anywhere at any time through the URL http://www.mgutheses.org since its launching in 2008.
With all the encouragement and instruments provided by UGC during the the last decadeIt MGU Archive is still the only successful full text Open Access archives of dissertations hosted in the web by any Indian University. The archive has been selected as one of the Very Best Web Resources for Education and Research by INTUTE, the European Consortium of universities funded by Government of UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). MGU has also become the first signatory among Indian universities to adopt UGC’s Regulation on E-Theses and contribute data to the UGC’s national Open Access archive of theses at INFLIBNET.
The present Workshop is intended to encourage other universities and research institutes in India to bring results of academic research to public domain and also familiarize Nitya D Arch and the multilingual technologies for full text archiving used in developing the MGU Digital Archives of PhD theses that can be easily adopted by any university or research institute for any Indian language. Nitya D’ Arch facilitates multilingual data input, advanced Boolean query building, and deep indexing which facilitates retrieval of specific pages/sections. The workshop will discuss various problems hidden in the process of digitization of dissertations and introduce tetsed techniques and solutions. It will be an opportunity for implementers and developers from Indian universities to gain both technical and theoretical insight in Theses Digitaization, technologies for Indian languages, and providing Open Acces to results of public funded research.
No registration fee will be charged for the participants who are selected to undergo the programme in the first batch. But selection will be based on merit of the participants benefits of this capability building for the sponsoring institute. Cost of boarding, lodging, travel and other expenses are to be born by the sponsoring institution.

For Registration, Contact: Dr. R. Raman Nair, Mahatma Gandhi University Library, Priyadarsini Hills, Kottayam- 686560. Telephone: 0481 273080, 273018, 9387826738
For related programs and announcements, please visit the blog: http://mgutheses.wordpress.org and also the news section of the MGU theses Archive at mgutheses.org from where the Workshop brochure and Registration Form can be downloaded.