Library Research Guides: Finding Dissertations and Theses : Other Resources

Subject Databases

A number of electronic databases include dissertations and theses in addition to journal articles, books, chapters, Festschrifts and other scholarly materials. Among them are:

America: History & Life
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Bibliographic database focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada, indexing more than 1,800 journals published, dissertations and reviews.
In addition to the principle English language sources in the field, it includes some (about 10%) in other languages, as well as some state and local history journals. All aspects of historical inquiry are represented: diplomatic, ecclesiastical, agricultural, cultural, economic, political, military and others. The index also provides citations to book and media reviews from about 100 journals and references to abstracts of dissertations in the field. All abstracts are in English.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
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Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature is a bibliography compiled by the Modern Humanities Research Association. ABELL lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays, and doctoral dissertations.
Contains more than 1 million records, from 1892 through to today with regular monthly updates. It indexes more than 850 journals and is a resource for literary criticism published between 1892-1962.
ARTbibliographies Modern
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Specialist bibliography of modern and contemporary art from 1974 to the present.
Includes abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews. Also incorporates book records, including those drawn from the collections of the Tate Library and the Bibliothèque Dominique Bozo, Musée LAM. Covers performance art and installation works, photography, video art, computer and electronic art, body art, graffiti, artist's books, theatre arts, conservation, crafts, ceramic and glass art, ethnic arts, graphic and museum design, fashion, and calligraphy, as well as traditional media including illustration, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and drawing.
BHA and RILA
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BHA and RILA cover European and American visual arts material including articles from over 1,200 journals. These citation databases, searchable together, cover material published between 1975 and 2007.
RILA covers the years 1975–1989. It was produced at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and Michael Rinehart was the editor-in-chief. In 1982, Getty began to support RILA, and in 1990 the Getty began to collaborate with INIST-CNRS to produce the BHA, which was a merger of RILA and the Répertoire d'art et d'archéologie.
Dissertations & Theses @ Big Ten Academic Alliance
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Access to dissertations and theses produced by students at Big Ten institutions.
Gender Studies Database
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Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, and gender identity.
Gender Studies Database, provides indexing and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship. It offers over a million records from scholarly and popular publications, including journals, books, conference papers and theses.
GeoRef
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Index to earth science articles in journals and books, as well as books, maps, government publications, conference proceedings, technical reports, theses and dissertations.
The GeoRef database, contains over 3.8 million records to journal articles, books, government publications, maps and conference publications related to geology, geophysics, geochemistry, hydrogeology, paleontology and mineralogy. It contains citations to all of the publications indexed in the Bibliography and Index of North American Geology, Abstracts of North American Geology, Bibliography of Theses in Geology, Geophysical Abstracts, Bibliography and Index of Geology Exclusive of North America, and the Bibliography and Index of Geology. GeoRef is the most comprehensive index to geoscience information. The database includes references to all U.S. Geological Survey and state geological survey publications, as well as geological survey publications from other countries of the World. It also indexes Masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from US and Canadian universities.
Historical Abstracts
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Index to journals, chapters and theses about world history, 1450 to present.
Covers modern world history (excluding the United States and Canada which are covered in the database America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present. It currently indexes about 2,300 journals in 40 languages, with indexing also for some books and dissertations. Most of the article citations include abstracts of 75-100 words.
MLA International Bibliography
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The MLA Bibliography indexes material in modern languages, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film.
It contains references to scholarly research from journals and series, monographs, chapters of books, working papers, dissertations, proceedings, Festschriften and bibliographies.
OpenDissertations
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Free database providing access to records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world.
Includes content from American Doctoral Dissertations, a comprehensive record of dissertations accepted by American universities, the print index Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities. Searched by author, title, subject and university.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text
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Comprehensive bibliography of writings about music featuring citations, abstracts and indexes. Covers nearly one and a half million publications from the early 19th century to the present on traditional music, popular music, jazz, classical music, and related subjects. Also includes full text of over 260 periodicals. New titles are added annually
Offers international coverage of the music scene, covering books, bibliographies, conference proceedings, catalogs, discographies, dissertations, ethnographic recordings, Festschriften, films, iconographies, and videos.

Websites of Interest

Center For Research Libraries - CRL holds more than 800,000 doctoral dissertations outside of the U.S. and Canada. Search dissertations in the dissertations section of the CRL catalogue. Digitized dissertations can be searched in the catalogue's e-resources section.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations - A collection of more than 800,000 international full text theses and dissertations.

OpenDOAR - The Directory of Open Access Repositories - Provides a quality-assured listing of open access repositories around the world.

PhdData - An open database of doctoral dissertations in progress around the world.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar
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Special version of Google's index to scholarly content on the web. Connects to full-text resources available to IU users.
oogle Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Connecting to Google Scholar from off-campus? The IUB Libraries already provide access to many of the journal articles indexed in Google Scholar. Look for IU-Link, which will lead you to information about full-text content you can access via the Libraries' subscriptions.

Google Scholar is primarily a tool for searching for articles, thus it includes few full-text dissertations or theses (this largely depends on how widely an author wants their work disseminated). However, Google Scholar may be a good place to look for references to dissertations which may appear in article bibliographies. If these references are to unpublished works, it may be difficult to track down the full document unless you contact the author directly.

Finding Dissertations and Theses

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Subject Databases

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Finding Dissertations and Theses

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