Political, institutional and library stakes of ETD dissemination: the French-speaking Swiss experience.

Abstract

The experiment of the University of Geneva around electronically structured theses - in the frame of the "Cyberthèses" programm - has been scattered in the other universities of the French-speaking part of Switzerland, according to the same model. The network which connect the libraries of these institutions is now federating these programs of electronic theses. A collaboration with the Swiss National Library which is preparing a national archiving programm for e-documents is beginning. In a federal country with decentralized political structures, library networks constitute themselves according to political and linguistic logic (German, French). These networks or some of their members are the expression of different programms in the fields of on-line diffusion and archival storage. Questions are emerging on each other practices. Political institutions recommend to share informations, encourage collaborations and are preparing basic guidelines. The running experiences challenge the traditional role of librarians and libraries faced with new perspectives of electronic diffusion and archiving and create new models of collaboration between rather different institutions.