Uppsala University Library is turning 400 and is celebrating this anniversary by converting 400 doctoral dissertations into electronic form so that their complete texts are freely available in DiVA. The dissertations will also become searchable in LIBRIS, SwePub, Google Scholar and other databases. Open access is based on the idea that publicly funded research should be free to read and download so that the results are freely reusable, while the author retains the copyright.

“The University Library has worked for many years to make all theses and dissertations published at Uppsala University since 1602 available through open access. Now we would like to reach everyone who has published theses relatively recently, but that have not been available electronically,” says Carina Bromark, digitisation coordinator at Uppsala University Library.

The UUB400 anniversary celebrations are highlighting the past, present and future of the library. It is important to make its collections accessible, but perhaps particularly important to make the research conducted at Uppsala University accessible. Digitising dissertations is offered at no cost.