About the Georgia Tech Digital Repository

Mission

The mission of the Georgia Tech Digital Repository is to collect, preserve, and expand access to the unique digital collections of immediate and long-term value to Georgia Tech and the global community. The collecting scope of the repository includes Institute research and scholarship; university documents; and special collections. See our Collection Development Policy.

Access

The Georgia Tech Library encourages open, public access to items maintained within the repository; however, there are instances where copyright law or specific needs of the depositor requires campus-only or otherwise restricted access.

Institute theses and dissertations between the years of 1978 and 2003 are closed to campus. If you would like to make your GT thesis or dissertation openly available, contact us at repository@library.gatech.edu.

Persistence & Citation

Each record in the repository is assigned a persistent identifier, a long-lasting reference to the digital resource that provides a method for reliably identifying, verifying and locating that resource over time. Repository persistent identifiers are registered using the handle system. Further registration with DataCite and the assignment of a DOI is available for some items upon request.

When citing an item in the GT Digital Repository, use the digital resource identifier as the permanent link (usually in the form of http://hdl.handle.net/1853/xxxxx).

Preservation

The Georgia Tech Digital Repository is managed and sustained locally by the GT Library utilizing the DSpace repository platform. Collections are preserved in accordance with the Library’s preservation policy, which articulates the Library’s institutional commitment to steward its collections over time for use by current stakeholders and future generations. All materials within the repository are preserved via distributed digital copies maintained both here at Georgia Tech via daily snapshots and offsite in DuraCloud as archival information packages. All Georgia Tech created digital materials held by the Library are included in this network.

Withdrawal

Content in the Georgia Tech Digital Repository is considered permanent in nature. However, under certain circumstances, such as copyright violation, it may be deemed necessary by the Georgia Tech Library to withdraw items from the repository.

Withdrawal requests may be initiated by contacting repository@library.gatech .edu. The Georgia Tech Library reserves the right to evaluate the request and make a decision about whether to withdraw the item.

Scholarship may not be withdrawn because the depositor or author is no longer affiliated with the Institute. The depositor has the right to give additional copies to other institutions under the non-exclusive agreement.

Since 2004, Georgia Tech has required all theses and dissertations be submitted electronically, with the electronic copy of record being housed in the Georgia Tech Digital Repository. Every Georgia Tech student submitting a thesis or dissertation is required to sign the repository license agreement.

This agreement assigns a non-exclusive license to Georgia Tech to preserve and make available the online, electronic copy of the thesis, after any author prescribed embargo periods. This means that Georgia Tech will generally not withdraw any thesis from open online access, except under extreme extenuating circumstances, such as the discovery of a copyright violation.

To avoid loss of the scholarly record, any withdrawal transactions will be documented in the form of a note in the description.provenance field of the Dublin Core item record. Additionally, because any repository item may have been cited or linked, we will always supply a tombstone item record which will include the original metadata (for verification), plus one of the notes below in place of the link to the object.

The content of the note in the item record should be one of the following:

  • "removed from view at request of the author"
  • "removed from view by legal order"
  • "removed from view at Georgia Institute of Technology's discretion"
  • "removed from view at Georgia Institute of Technology Library's discretion"
For questions about the Georgia Tech Digital Repository, please contact repository@library.gatech.edu