The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) international consortium is pleased to announce this year's award winners. The awards recognize students who have written exemplary electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) as well as leaders who have helped to promote ETD programs. Winners have demonstrated new dimensions of scholarship being explored by individuals who have made significant contributions to the worldwide ETD movement.

The Awards Program includes several categories of appreciation. The Innovative ETD Award recognizes student efforts to transform the genre of the print dissertation through the use of innovative software to create cutting edge ETDs. Use of renderings, photos, video and other multimedia objects that are included in the electronic document were considered as part of the innovation of the work. The Innovative Learning through ETDs Award recognizes a graduate whose professional life has been enhanced by the ETD process. Finally, the ETD Leadership Award recognizes members of the university community whose leadership and vision has helped raise awareness of the benefits of ETDs, and whose efforts have improved graduate education through the use of ETDs.  Criteria for consideration of the awards are available online. 

The awards will be presented at the ETD 2013 Symposium, to be held September 24 - 26, 2012 at the Central Library, Hong Kong.

Innovative ETD Award

Each winner receives $500 and is eligible to receive an additional $500 in travel scholarship funding to attend the ETD Symposium.

Helen J. Burgess / Ph.D. English (2003) / West Virginia University - USA

In Helen J. Burgess’ doctoral dissertation "Highways of the mind: the haunting of the superhighway from the World's Fair to the World Wide Web" she produced the first truly digital dissertation in the United States which took full advantage of a Web-based format - incorporating an HTML and multimedia environment. Her dissertation consists of well-organized Web pages, persistence index links, photographs as well as video and audio clips linked throughout the document. This allows the reader to completely immerse into the digital environment and provide immediately accessible examples indicated in textual format. As a true testament to time and durability, Burgess’ ETD is still as functional today as the day it was posted online a decade ago. The bundle of dissertation files contain the Web page version as well as a “linear” book format version in PDF format, along with copies of all multimedia objects preserved in their original format, for preservation purposes.

Helen J. Burgess is an Associate Professor of English in the Communication and Technology track at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dr. Burgess received her BA(Hons) and MA(Dist.) in English Language and Literature from Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, and her PhD in English from West Virginia University. She is active in the new media research community as editor of the online journal Hyperrhiz: new Media Cultures, and technical editor of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. Dr. Burgess is coauthor of "Red Planet: Scientific and Cultural Enounters with Mars and Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information", both titles published in the "Mariner10" interactive DVD-Rom series at the University of Pennsylvania Press.

She has interests in multimedia and web development, open source and open content production, electronic literature, and science fiction. Her next project is Futurama, Autogeddon: Imagining the Superhighway from the World's Fair to the World Wide Web, a study of media representations of the American Interstate Superhighway system.

Evgeniya Lyubomirova (Jenny) Snauffer / Master of Science in Oceanography (2013) / University of British Columbia, Canada

In Evgeniya Lyubomirova (Jenny) Snauffer's Masters Thesis "Modeling herring and hake larval dispersal in the Salish Sea" she used a 3-D Regional Ocean Modeling System studying the effect of strong winds in the Strait of Georgia on the drift of hake and herring larvae at different depths and locations. Pacific herring and hake are commercially important fish in the Strait of Georgia (the body of water that separates Vancouver Island from mainland British Columbia in Canada), and both species use the Strait as their larval rearing grounds. The larvae are dependent on ocean currents to bring them to areas with enough food to sustain them. Larval mortality is the greatest of any life stages and it determines abundance at an adult age.

The significant innovation is the inclusion of animated time series graphs (AVI movies) showing the drift of hake and herring larvae over time. In addition to many complex graphs in her thesis, Ms Snauffer included four .avi moving graphs as supplementary materials. The moving graphs give a visual of the results that could not be described as clearly in words, and that would be cumbersome to get across in a series of static graphs. This visual method enables the research results to be shared more quickly and effectively, increasing cooperation and collaboration among different researchers.

Snauffer is currently an ocean modeller with an extensive software programming background. Upon completion of her thesis, Snauffer will seek opportunities to apply her modelling and software development skills in the Victoria or Vancouver area.

ETD Leadership Award

Each winner receives international honorary recognition.

Linda Goodfellow, Ph.D., R.N. / Duquesne University / USA

As one of only two nurses in the world who have published on electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), Dr. Linda Goodfellow built an International Research Team made up of both a nurse scientist and a librarian from Australia, Great Britain and the United States to explore the knowledge and use of ETDs and digital libraries among faculty, graduate students and alumni of schools of nursing (Phase 1). The findings of this funded research study have been recently published by International Nursing Review and a second manuscript is under preparation for submission to a leading international library science journal. The international team of researchers has also presented its research at a range of nursing conferences (e.g. in Florida in the US and in London, England) and at library science conferences (e.g. in Boston in the US and in Glasgow, Scotland). Plans are underway for further international dissemination of the results. The research team is currently working on Phase 2 to further ascertain awareness and use of ETDs through narrative inquiry and is seeking funding for Phase 3 and 4. Phase 3 will include developing and testing an international online interactive educational intervention and Phase 4, the creation of a webinar to educate nurse scholars on ETDs and to sustain the project. According to Dr. Goodfellow, "Our interdisciplinary team believes that our research will radically change the way graduate student research is presented, disseminated and used."

Prior to joining the faculty at Duquesne University School of Nursing in 1989, Dr. Linda Goodfellow taught at both St. Margaret's Hospital School of Nursing and Carlow College. In addition, she worked at several local hospitals on their adult critical care units. For the first ten years at Duquesne University, Dr. Goodfellow taught in the undergraduate nursing program; specifically, medical-surgical, critical care and oncology nursing. During this time she completed her PhD in Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh with a focus in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) or the study of mind over body. In 2000, Dr. Goodfellow began teaching in the online PhD Program in Nursing. Over the years she has taught the research seminar course, the quantitative research course, and the issues in measurement course. Currently, she teaches the structure of nursing knowledge course and the research emphasis course to the PhD students and, serves as chair or committee member of several dissertation studies. The majority of Dr. Goodfellow's PhD students have received funding from specialty organizations or foundations for their dissertation studies. In addition, she teaches the methods of research course to students enrolled in the Masters Program.

Elsabé Olivier & John H. Hagen, NDLTD ETD Awards Committee Co-Chairs, July 8, 2013.