What are ETDs?
- Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Welcome to the modern era! Instead of having your thesis or dissertation paper copy bound and placed in a library and also microfilmed, you now make it available electronically (usually in the form of an Adobe PDF) for the world to view!
Sounds cool! What does this mean for me, though?
- It means you have to follow the FSU Graduate School Theses, Treatise, and Dissertation formatting instructions very carefully.
- It also means you need to allow additional time for manuscript clearance. An actual person in the Graduate School office reviews each manuscript for formatting and submits responses electronically.
- Additional instructions are provided for music documents; please review the presentation carefully!
What else does this mean? Oh wait, I have musical examples in my document!
- You will likely need to obtain permission to use musical examples in your thesis/treatise/dissertation.
Can I claim that my musical examples are instances of Fair Use?
- Maybe, but likely not. Your thesis/treatise/dissertation will be available to anyone in the world through the internet – not limited to people at FSU.
- You may be able to make your case with very short musical examples, but you should do some exploration and not assume.
Now what?
- For each piece of music in your document, you should look for the following information:
- Year of publication (not year of composition)
- Publisher information
- If you have images/photographs, where did you obtain them?
- Using images/photographs from the internet?
- Who owns the copyright?
- Did the creator grant a Creative Commons license?
- Did they provide attribution?
- From a book? Look in the credits information – sometimes at the very end of the book – to find out who granted the book author license to use the images.
- If you took the photographs yourself (e.g., as part of field work), then you are the creator and can use your own images. If you took a photo of something in a book, you are not the creator.
