So I’m looking at a shelf of books in my office and realize that most of them were published pre 2000. In the electronic age, most of my educational media is electronic. Now it seems I have more e-books and e-journals than paper anything. Less and less of what I do involves ‘hard copies’ of material. People have gone to paperless offices, but what do I do with the books on my shelf? Some of them are the Ph.D. theses of students who put them together as part of their degree. My Ph.D. thesis is on that same shelf. Do we stop printing the academic works of masters and Ph.D. dissertations?

When I received my Ph.D. I gave a printed copy of my thesis for my parents. My mother still displays that document on her bookshelf. If a thesis is electronic what will parents do? Perhaps they will put the thesis thumbnail on their home page.

That is just sad.