Your ethesis should be submitted to the LRA as part of the final thesis submission process laid out by the Graduate School. It should be a single file as a PDF format document.

While it may seem daunting there is a lot of support available to help you work through the process.  See also how to delay your thesis going online.

Creating a PDF document

A PDF is the currently the acceptable format for us to store and make available documents like your thesis on the LRA, and should be the format in which you will send your thesis to us. There are a number of different ways available to create a PDF from your thesis files. While a PDF/A document is preferable for archiving, a standard PDF is acceptable.

MS Word

You can easily create a PDF of your thesis from within MS Office 2007:

1. Click Windows Office Button | Save As | PDF or XPS
2. Click Options and check the box for ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A)
3. Click Ok and then Publish
4. This will start the PDF document creation process

Other word processors

If you are using other software to write your thesis in (e.g. Open Office) then read the help information for your software on how to create PDF formatted documents.

If you have used LATEX to produce your article then it is simple procedure to use the freeware application Ghostscript to turn a PostScript file into a PDF file

PDF Creation software

If you have access to Adobe Acrobat Professional then you can use this to create very high quality PDFs. While this software is not available on campus PCs, your department may have arrangements to make it available to you.

Alternatively you can install and use one of the free PDF creation software packages on the internet such as PDF Online, CutePDF, PDF Forge, Jaws PDF Creator.

Multiple files

If your thesis is comprised of a number of separate chapter files these will need to be assembled into a single PDF. The Student Development course on MS Word 2007 for Long Documents has advice on combining them into a single file. 

If you need assistance or advice on any of this process then contact the ithelp@le.ac.uk, telephone 0116 252 2253 or visit the IT Help Zone in the David Wilson Library.

Submitting your eThesis

You can submit your PDF to the LRA team in a number of ways:

• By email if it less than 5mb in size
• For larger files we recommend you use an online secure free file-sending service to send it to the LRA Team's email address:
• DropSend (up to 2Gb)
• FileMail.com (up to 2Gb)
• Mailbigfile.com (up to 300Mb)
• EmailLarge File (up to 200Mb)
• On CD, DVD or USB thumb drive in person to the David Wilson Library or through the post

We will notify you upon receipt of your thesis, and again once it is live on the LRA. This will only occur once we receive the final print thesis and paper work from the Graduate School. We will also handle supplying it to the British Library's EThOS service.