ThesisVault: A Smart Repository System for Preserving and Accessing Academic Research

Abstract

The physical storage of hardbound theses presents significant limitations in accessibility, search efficiency, and long-term preservation. This study developed ThesisVault, a web-based smart repository system designed to preserve and improve access to academic research for the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science program at St. Clare College of Caloocan.
The system incorporates digital preservation, full-text search and filtering, metadata management, role-based access control (Guest, Student, Moderator, Superadmin), and advanced features including a Plagiarism Checker, Related Studies search, and a bilingual English-Tagalog AI Chatbot. Using a quantitative research approach and Agile methodology, pre-development surveys were administered to 300 students and 6 faculty members to identify challenges and feature preferences, followed by post-development evaluation with hands-on testing.
Results showed that students faced significant difficulties with manual searches (WM=3.94) and topic verification (WM=3.88), while faculty cited the lack of a centralized database (WM=4.33) and inefficient retrieval processes (WM=4.33) as primary concerns. Post-development evaluation revealed substantial improvements, with students rating the system at 4.83 (Very Useful) and faculty at 4.65 (Very Useful), up from pre-development ratings of 4.28 and 4.30 respectively. ThesisVault successfully bridges the gap between valuable thesis knowledge and the community's ability to access and utilize that knowledge.