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Norma Marion Alloway Library

Theses & Dissertations - Search Tips

Suggestions for finding the full text of theses and dissertations.

Online Repositories

American Doctoral Dissertations (EBSCOhost)

  • An open-access collection of historic and contemporary dissertations and theses.

DART-Europe E-theses Portal

  • A partnership of research libraries and library consortia working to improve global access to European research theses.

Dissertation Express

  • Search ProQuest dissertations from 1977 to the present.

EBSCO Open Dissertations - (requires TWU login); Public search interface - no login required

EThOS (British Library - Electronic Theses Online Service) 

  • Search over 350,000 doctoral theses

National ETD Portal (South Africa)

  • A collection of more than 137,000 theses.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) | More info

  • A collection of more than 5.9 million international full-text theses and dissertations.

Open Access Theses and Dissertations

  • OATD currently indexes over 4.9 million theses and dissertations.

OpenThesis

  • OpenThesis is a free repository of theses, dissertations, and other academic documents.
  • Students and faculty are encouraged to upload their theses, dissertations, and other publications.

PQDT Open (Open Access dissertations)

  • PQDT Open is a list of Open Access dissertations provided by ProQuest.
  • It is not searchable from within ProQuest.
  • The easiest way to search it is to go the link above and do a text find (Ctrl+f Windows; Command + f Mac) from within your browser.
  • You can search for key terms or author names.
  • The PQDT Open dissertations are also searchable by search engine.
  • For best results do a title search with the title in quotation marks, and with the author's name outside the quotation marks. E.g. "Scandium oxide thin films and their optical properties in the extreme ultraviolet" Acosta

Commercially Published Theses or Dissertations

  • Dissertations are sometimes published commercially (and often with a different title). Check the TWU Catalogue or WorldCat, and search by author name.

Discipline-related Databases

  • Some theses and dissertations may not be available through any of the means above, but the authors may have published journal articles based on their research. Searching a specialized database (Article Databases) for the author's name and adding keywords related to the topic of his/her research, may find articles they have published. In addition, some databases, CINAHL, MLA Bibliography, PsycInfo, etc. index theses and dissertations.