19 Theses and Dissertations - Searching Specific Formats (Information Research)
Description
This article is from the Information Research FAQ, by David Novak david@spireproject.com with numerous contributions by others.
19 Theses and Dissertations - Searching Specific Formats (Information Research)
links and more at http://spireproject.com/discuss.htm
Theses and dissertations are professional papers completed for higher
degrees. That is to say, they are long, dense and often very esoteric
and convoluted. Trouble is, most theses and dissertations have no more
than 12 copies ever - one always to the University Library, one with
the author, but others scatter to the wind.
All University Libraries hold a copy of past theses undertaken at their
university. This gives rise to the unfortunate but necessary pastime of
searching each local university library for relevant theses. The
advantage here is masters and occasionally honours theses are indexed.
Most often, just undertake a keyword search then add "thes*"
(truncation of theses or thesis).
Electronic Theses Databases:
Dissertation Abstracts Online, produced by UMI, delivers abstracts to
most every doctoral dissertation/thesis in North America, some master's
theses and some international theses. This is the definitive site to
search, though you will need the help of your library to see more than
the abstract. Some libraries will have subscribed to Dissertations
Abstracts OnDisc - the CD-version of this database.
The [British] Index to Theses with Abstracts is a print directory by
ASLIB. This publication is also available as a database, available for
site licenses through Theses.com (www.theses.com). This source is quite
comprehensive as can be seen with the University List.
Several other national databases do exist. Here in Australia, a list of
theses was maintained from 1966 to 1991. The Gale Directory of
Databases also lists THESA, a database of French theses, and
Dissertations and Theses of the ROC (Taiwan).
The Australian Education Index (1978+), produced by ACER (Australian
Council for Educational Research), is a directory listing citations and
some abstracts to Australian work in education. Also available as a
commercial database, AEI is bundled into Austrom, a common collection
of Australian databases.
Digital Archives of Theses
In theory, some theses should be available on the internet,
particularly theses lodged electronically. There is a push for
universities to accept electronic thesis submission, and to build
digital archives of theses. The embryonic National Digital Library of
Theses and Dissertations (NDTLD - www.theses.org) is just one such a
project. There is a distributed and sequential keyword search to
participating universities through its not particularly functional. In
theory, this is an incremental improvement to searching library
catalogues.
Conclusion
Getting a thesis can be very difficult. You will need the help of a
document delivery through a library and many theses will not be
available to borrow. You can also buy theses. Read Obtaining Copies of
Dissertations (http://www.library.yale.edu/ref/err/disscops.htm) by
Yale University Library for more. For an alternative look at theses,
consider Locating Theses
(http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/hss/guides/fstheses.htm) by the Monash
University Library.
A note on developments in this field: some Theses abstracts are
emerging online already. Projects like the LA Theses Database
(Landscape Architecture Theses Archive) have much promise but poor
coverage. Full text theses presentation also have promise with the US
Department of Education funding a National Digital Library of Theses
and Dissertations and Virginia Tech starting to request electronic
submission of all theses.
UMI (the producers of Dissertation Abstracts Online) has backed this
move with a direct delivery service of electronic theses to US
libraries for $26, but only theses held in their digital archives are
available. Eventually, large digital Theses archives will be the norm,
but until then, very little will happen in this field.
A thesis is a tightly constrained information package, produced in the
university environment with limited appeal. For economic reasons, we
should not be surprised theses databases are incomplete. The emergence
of theses archives sounds interesting - a good use of the internet -
but does not represent a financial opportunity that could be explored
without government assistance. Consequently, this small area of the
information sphere is government grant-driven.
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