Our Contract with ProQuest

On January 18, 2005 Library and Archives Canada (LAC) signed a new agreement with ProQuest. The three year contract, which is in effect from April 1, 2005 to March 31, 2008, provides substantively the same services as the prior agreement.

During the first year of the contract the publishing fee will remain at $53.00 per thesis but it will increase to $55.00 in the second and third years. Library and Archives Canada will continue to provide a subsidy of $16.00 for the duration of the contract. The university fee will increase from $37.00 to $39.00 on April 1, 2006.

Starting in September 2006, each month ProQuest will send Canadian theses it digitized four years previously to Library and Archives Canada, where they will be freely accessible on the Theses Canada Portal. This means that LAC will receive theses digitized by ProQuest in September 2002 at the end of September 2006, theses digitized in October 2002 in October 2006 and so on. In the meantime Theses Canada will continue to enhance free access to Canadian electronic theses by harvesting "born-digital" theses as universities implement electronic theses submission programs.

Other services provided by ProQuest remain the same:

• all print theses submitted to the national theses program will be reformatted into Adobe PDF Image format;
• print and electronic theses will continue to be microfilmed. LAC will store the preservation master microfiches and will receive two service copies for ILL. Universities will continue to receive microfiche copies for their collections;
• each university will continue to have free online access to the PDF files of each thesis or dissertation submitted by that institution;
• each university can arrange to receive basic MARC catalogue records from ProQuest for each thesis it submits (universities can also download enhanced MARC records from AMICUS, Library and Archives Canada's online catalogue);
• ProQuest will include the catalogue records in its bibliographic services and products including its paper publications Dissertations Abstracts International and Masters Abstracts International and in all its online databases.