Students should follow the guidelines and manuals as specified by the student's own Faculty or Department when preparing their printed project reports.
Unlike postgraduate theses and dissertations, the creation of the electronic version of the project reports to be sent to the Library is usually undertaken by the individual Departments, students should thus check with their own Departments for instructions.
It is most likely that students will use a word processor to produce a printed copy of their project reports. This computer file can then be re-used to create an electronic version of the project report either by the Department or the student.
The electronic format of the project reports should be text-embedded searchable Adobe PDF (portable document format) files. The PDF files will be used for Web display and provide the potential for full text indexing. This format has been chosen because of its wide acceptance worldwide, its ease of creation and use, and its 'portability' or compatibility with many different computer platforms, such as Windows, Macintosh and Unix.
The PDF should be a searchable one, i.e. text embedded in the PDF. This will happen automatically if you use Acrobat to create the PDF files from common word processing software such as MS Word or WordPerfect. However, this will not happen if you scan a printed copy, store it in TIFF or other image format, and then convert it into PDF, unless you specify 'output text' in the output option. As well as the normal PDF file, the following multi-media files embedded in the PDF are also acceptable.
| Images |
GIF (.gif) JPEG (.jpeg) PDF (.pdf) use Type 1 PostScript fonts |
| Video |
Apple QuickTime (.mov) Microsoft Audio Video Interfleaved (.avi) MPEG (.mpg) |
| Audio |
AIF (.aif) MIDI (.midi) MP3 SND Wav (.wav) |
If embedding in the PDF is not possible, links from within the PDF to these outside objects can be included (then you must make sure that the PDF files and outside objects are submitted together in the same folder).
The Library and the Computing Services Centre only provide utilities for file conversion and PDF creation. Neither unit is responsible for checking the content or the format of the received reports. If the format of the received reports is unsuitable for storage and retrieval as required by the Library, the reports will be sent back to the Department concerned for reformatting. To check with the Library, please send your enquiries to lb@cityu.edu.hk. The responsibility of ensuring that the content of the report is correct lies, as always, with the individual student.
For each electronic project report, departments are requested to send one file that
contains the full text of the project report including title page, table of contents,
abstract and bibliography. The file should be named in the format:
{Year: 4 digits}{Department abbreviated code}{Student's Initials: Last name initial first}{Last 3 digit of Student's Student Number}.pdf
For example, the project report of an undergraduate student of year 2002-2003 of
Department of Electronic Engineering whose name is Chan Tai Man and student number is
12345678 should be named as: 2003eectm678.pdf **
| ** | Under most circumstances, the above filename will be unique. However, if there are same initials under same department of the same year and same last three digits of Student Number, the department needs to append a unique alphabet (starting from b) to the identical filename(s) before sending to the Library. |
For example:
2003eectm678.pdf for student Chan Tai Man (Student Number: 12345678),
2003eectm456.pdf for student Chan Tin Ming (Student Number: 12345456),
2003eectm456b.pdf for student Chan To Mun (Student Number: 78623456) etc.
Students may wish to use newer technologies, such as digital multimedia, hyperlinking, etc. for their project reports. In these cases, students must check early in their project production, on the viability of software involved vis-a-vis, library preservation, and incorporation of such project in the Library online database. Problems are not expected but please send your enquiries to lb@cityu.edu.hk for clarification.
