OpenThesis

is a free repository of theses, dissertations, and other academic documents, coupled with powerful search, organization, and collaboration tools.

As the first free database of its kind, we hope that you will take a moment to upload your theses, dissertations and other publications -- and ask your colleagues to do the same!

http://www.openthesis.org/

 

 

DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who

are working together to improve global access to European research theses.

DART-Europe is endorsed by LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de

Recherche), and it is the European Working Group of the Networked Digital

Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).

 

The DART-Europe partners help to provide researchers with a single European

Portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), and

they participate in advocacy to influence future European e-theses

developments. DART-Europe offers partners a European networking forum on ETD

issues, and may provide the opportunity to submit collaborative funding

applications to achieve DART-Europe's vision for ETDs.

 

DART-Europe

is resourced through partner contributions.

 

Partners support the following principles:

 

1.DART-Europe will encourage the creation, discovery and use of European

e-theses, and will maintain a central Portal for e-thesis aggregation and

access.

 

2.European libraries and consortia are invited to contribute metadata to the

DART-Europe Portal. Contributors will determine the terms and conditions

under which their metadata are contributed.

 

3.DART-Europe welcomes the contribution by partners of resources to support

the management, discovery, usability and preservation of e-theses, and to

further the aims and objectives of DART-Europe.

 

4.Partners will designate one representative to act as a contact for

DART-Europe, and will nominate at least one representative to participate in

the DART-Europe email lists.

 

5.DART-Europe welcomes offers from partners to host DART-Europe Project

Board meetings, as occasion demands.

 

6.Partners will help to secure DART-Europe's status as an international

network of excellence in information, expertise and resources relating to

ETDs.

 

7.DART-Europe will be administered by UCL (University College London) and

governed by a Board consisting of representatives of partner organisations.

The constitution and Terms of Reference of the governing Board will be

determined and from time to time reviewed by the Board.

 

http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php

 

 

 

JISC (UK), the National Library of Sweden and the Dutch SURFfoundation

have tested the interoperability of a selection of repositories for

e-theses and set up a freely accessible European e-Theses portal

providing access to over 10,000 doctoral theses. Five countries were

involved in the project: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and

the United Kingdom. The ETD demonstrator project proved that within this

repository infrastructure, interoperability of doctoral theses is

possible on a European or even larger scale.

 

The result of this pilot project is described in the report “*A Portal

for Doctoral e-theses in Europe; Lessons Learned from a Demonstrator

Project”*. The report gives practical recommendations to improve the

interoperability between the service provider and the data supplier. The

recommendations are entirely in line with the guidelines of the DRIVER

project (_www.driver-support.eu_ <http://www.driver-support.eu>). When

all repositories support a common metadata format, it is very easy to

set up services like the European e-Theses demonstrator portal. Without

appropriate agreements on metadata semantics, however, many issues will

arise when harvesting metadata of poor quality.

 

The report is available on*

**_www.surffoundation.nl/smartsite.dws?ch=ENG&id=13180_***

<http://www.surffoundation.nl/smartsite.dws?ch=ENG&id=13180>**

The ETD demonstrator can be found at _http://e-thesis.sharelab.cq2.org_

<http://e-thesis.sharelab.cq2.org/>

 

Further information about European e-theses developments is available on

the 'GUIDE' Website _http://www.dartington.ac.uk/guide/index.asp_

 

 

Free Dissertations/Theses Sites

 

Abes: Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Superieur http://www.abes.fr/abes/DesktopDefault.aspx?Loupe=Moin Citations to French dissertations.

 

Australian Digital Theses Program http://adt.caul.edu.au This site provides both citation and full-text access to a few thousand theses and dissertations published in Australia.

 

The British Library http://www.bl.uk/services/bsds/dsc/theses.html The British Library provides access to citations of theses from British universities (most doctoral theses from the early 1970s onward), from the United States (475,000 doctoral theses), and from Canada (several hundred doctoral theses from 1980 forward).

 

Center for Research Libraries http://www.crl.edu Twenty thousand doctoral dissertations from outside of the United States and Canada are searchable from this site. Items can be ordered through ILL by students, faculty, and staff.

 

Cybertheses http://www.cybertheses.org/cybertheses/cybertheses.html Cybertheses allows access to citations of French dissertations from 1972 to the present.

 

Digital Library and Archives http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses Digital Library and Archives allows searching for citations and abstracts of over 6,700 theses and dissertations. Free full-text access is provided for over 4,500 of these items.

 

Directory of Dissertations in Progress http://www.historians.org/pubs/dissertations/index.cfm "The Directory contains 3,804 dissertations in progress at 170 academic departments in Canada and the U.S." This is a citation database of dissertations in progress in the area of history.

 

Dissertation.com http://www.dissertation.com Dissertation.com has just a few hundred dissertations and theses in its collection, but the site allows free, full-text access to the first twenty-five pages of each item.

 

Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology http://www.music.indiana.edu/ddm This is an international database of citations for dissertations in musicology that contains over 12,000 records. Dissertations are from approximately 1950 to the present.

 

NDLTD - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations http://www.ndltd.org NDLTD provides access to citations from thousands of digital dissertations and theses that are in PDF format. A significant number of these resources are freely available in full-text and can be viewed online.

 

PhdData: The Universal Index of Dissertations in Progress http://www.phddata.org PhdData has citations from several thousand dissertations in progress from various parts of the world.

 

Proquest Digital Dissertations http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations Proquest provides the past two years of citations and abstracts in their Digital Dissertations database at no cost.

 

Theses Canada Portal http://www.collectionscanada.ca/thesescanada/index-e.html

Theses Canada provides access to bibliographic citations for all the theses in the National Library of Canada Theses Collection. Access to full-text theses is available for all items published between January 1, 1998 to August 31, 2002.

 

Theses Link Collection http://www.mkengel.de/thesis/thesis.htm This site gives links to dissertation/theses search sites in many different countries, including Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway.

 

TREN: Theological Research Exchange Network http://www.tren.com TREN provides citations to 6,800 theological theses/dissertations and conference papers. Items can then be purchased through this site. The opening page actually states that they have 10,000 theses/dissertations, but the search page allows searching of 6,800 items.

 

 

http://www.escholarlypub.com/digitalkoans/2005/07/08/electronic-theses-and-dissertations-a-bibliography/

 

This bibliography presents selected English-language

articles, conference papers, and other printed and

electronic sources that are useful in understanding

electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). It emphasizes

formally published works. Where possible, links are provided

to sources that are freely available on the Internet.