Stub Records: The Middle Path of ETD Curation

Because curators of electronic theses and dissertations must serve both creators and researchers, it can be difficult to navigate which party’s wishes should be honored first when creators do not want their thesis or dissertation made available to researchers yet. Some institutions simply do not allow creators to limit their works’ visibility. Texas Tech gives creators more choice in this matter, but have had difficulty letting researchers know via DSpace that the work had been completed. Stub records in DSpace are a good way to honor creators’ wishes to not have their works immediately published open access but still allow researchers to know that the work exists. The presentation will highlight the benefits of stub records and the ease of creating them.