Theses – improved ordering as of 7 August 2006
We have improved the way some theses are ordered; you can now use the Integrated Catalogue to order theses that are already held by the Library.
Theses/Dissertations
Theses are a major source of research and we hold many thousands in our collection. Our holdings consist mainly of UK and North American doctoral theses. Further details of the collection are given below.
British Doctoral Theses
The British Thesis Service provides access to most of the doctoral theses awarded by British universities since the early 1970s.
US Doctoral Theses
Our collection contains more than 475,000 US doctoral theses acquired from UMI (now ProQuest Information & Learning). We hold all doctoral theses distributed by UMI from 1970-78; doctoral theses distributed by UMI before 1970 and from 1979-2000/2001 were acquired on demand.
We use UMI/ProQuest's Dissertation Abstracts database to match requests with our holdings. So, if you are a UK or Irish customer and find details of a pre-2001 thesis you require in that database, or any other source, send a request through our document supply service. Unfortunately, we cannot supply US Doctoral Theses to international customers.
Doctoral theses from those US universities which do not use the UMI/ProQuest service were also acquired on demand, usually in microform. Records are available since 1980 in our Integrated Catalogue.
Regrettably, with effect from 1 September 2001, US doctoral theses are no longer acquired.
Canadian Doctoral Theses
We hold several hundred Canadian doctoral theses. These include theses obtained from the National Library of Canada's Canadian Theses Service up to 1989 and from UMI/ProQuest from 1990 to 2000/01. Records for all Canadian doctoral theses held since 1980 are included in our Integrated Catalogue.
Regrettably, with effect from 1 September 2001, Canadian doctoral theses are no longer acquired.
Other theses
Records for our selective holdings of other doctoral theses since 1980 are available in our Integrated Catalogue. Theses for lower level degrees are not generally collected, but some may be held if they are issued for example in report series or working paper series as may be the case.
Ordering Theses
British Theses
Purchase or borrow through our British Thesis Service following the link in our 'More useful content'.
US and Canadian Theses:
- Theses distributed by UMI (ProQuest) - available only on loan to UK and Irish registered customers. Order through our Document Supply Loan Service.
- Theses NOT distributed by UMI (ProQuest) - available to all Document Supply registered customers. Order through our Document Supply Loan Service.
- Other theses - if we do not hold these in our own collection, UK and Irish customers may order them through our WorldWide Searches service.
