Google publishes Stanford dissertations online

"Stanford doctoral students will now be able to post their dissertations on Google as the university replaces the traditional bound volumes of acid-free paper with e-files of scholarly work. Beginning last week, students who used to lug three or four copies of their capstone university work to Stanford's registrar's office could file their dissertations by simply uploading them from their computer. "It doesn't make sense anymore that the final medium for scholarship should still be paper," said university Registrar Tom Black, one of the administrators behind the change. The switch, which began last Monday, will affect the more than 600 doctoral dissertations filed each year at Stanford. Plans already are being made to extend the electronic effort to thousands of master's theses and honors papers" - SFGate