Handling of LaTeX-ETDs and TeX-Conversion

Within the natural sciences, in particular in mathematics, most of the ETDs are based on LaTeX-coded sources whereas the presentation format is more or less PDF. However, in the international library systems the LaTeX source files are not stored in general, they are ignored since there is no competence in this format type in the libraries. On the other hand there exist servers, e.g. the ArXiv-Server or MathDiss International , accepted by the scientists, which trust in LaTeX-files exclusively and which believe in their archiving quality. So the question arises: * How should we handle LaTeX-ETDs in the library system? In the context of ETDs in natural sciences and especially in mathematics we have to discuss further aspects of LaTeX-files: * How to check the inner consistency of delivered LaTeX-documents consisting of various LaTeX-Files? * LaTeX as archiving format? * Conversion aspects (e.g. TeX to XML, in particular TeX to MathML