A common problem reported by conservation professionals and researchers is that they don't know that someone, somewhere has already produced the information that they need as part of a student research project. Students' bibliographical references can be extremely useful but are rarely seen outside their courses. Often a conservation student's Masters or Bachelors dissertation produced in one country has looked into a question of common interest elsewhere, but unless the student has had the chance to publish or to present their research at a conference, the work is not reported or translated for wider dissemination. Existing resources such as the ICCROM library can help but the papers it holds are primarily published material and theses are only a small proportion of its holdings.

A central resource specifically intended for holding student theses and providing a multi-lingual bibliography of titles would help to overcome this difficulty. This Group could provide such an archive, with titles in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portugeuse and Spanish and a link to download full texts in any common file type (such as PDF or Word).

If you have produced a dissertation or thesis as part of your conservation studies and would like it to reach an international professional community, why not send it for access from this site? Your University may have rules about third-party access to your thesis, so do check first, although in most cases you should have author's rights. If you are interested, or want to comment on this proposal, post your comment here or send your expression of interest to the Group administrator at acrg.administrator@fastmail.fm