Investigating the viewpoints of central libraries'''' managers of governmental universities about users'''' access to dissertations

The purpose of the present study is to identify the viewpoints of central libraries'' managers of governmental universities which are supervised by two ministries of Science, Research and Technology and Health and Medical Education regarding users'' access to dissertations.

As a descriptive survey, all Managers of the central libraries of governmental universities which are supervised by two ministries of Science, Research and Technology and Health and Medical Education were participated in the study. Considering limited number of population members, sampling was not used in this study. The data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire.

The findings showed that central libraries'' managers of the universities have different viewpoints on access to dissertations. The managers'' points of view about the levels of access to the dissertation are different for users within or outside the university campus, so that they think that it''s better users have access to the full text within the university, and they have access to only bibliographic information outside the university. In addition, they agree with accessing to parts of the dissertations (not full text) in both printed and/or electronic version on charge. Managers were agreed with "PDF" format among different electronic versions.

Despite the importance of recognizing the attitude of library managers towards determining the policy of making dissertations available to library users, this issue has not been studied till now. This article addresses this important issue.