Users may also order for a fee, electronic copies of other dissertations from 1997-present or print or microform copies from earlier years. Digital Dissertations also provides an index to dissertations from 1861 to the present. However, once a copy of a dissertation has been ordered from any ucsb.edu terminal, it may be retrieved from any Web-connected terminal within 72 hours using the URL and PIN number provided. So, a Digital Dissertations user can locate a UC dissertation from a computer in the Davidson Library, and download, view and print the file from the user's home or office computer later that day or the next day. Digitized Primary Sources Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during an historical event or time period.
Primary sources are the evidence left behind by participants or observers.
To improve access, many such collections are now being copied into digital form and made available via the Web. For more information on primary sources, see Library Research Using Primary Sources , a guide created by the UC-Berkeley Library. These documents are valuable sources of social, historical, statistical, technical and policy information. More and more of these reports especially from U.S. government agencies, are distributed electronically. In many areas of scholarship, researchers are using the Internet to distribute their research as preprints or working papers, bypassing traditional journal publication.