Looking for theses and dissertations part I

A student may ask us:

How can I find a thesis that is not from Thammasat University?

or the student may ask:

I am looking for a dissertation that was not awarded by Thammasat. Where do I look? 

We can suggest:

Check the TU Library e-thesis webpage.

In addition to theses and research papers by Thammasat University students, a wide variety of theses are also available for TU researchers.

The student may wonder:

How can I know what website to look for dissertations on?

We may reply:

That depends on the topic of research and who is likely to have done research on a similar subject in the past.

If the student expresses concern by saying:

Why do I have to look at more than website?

We can reply:

Searching for a research topic at the websites listed on the TU Library e-thesis webpage only takes a few seconds.

Depending on the student’s area of research, it may be helpful to start by looking for an open access copy online at OATD.org (Open Access Theses and Dissertations).

As its website declares,

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 4,617,266 theses and dissertations.

Another source with many dissertations available is ProQuest’s Dissertation Express.

Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global is the largest single repository of graduate dissertations and theses, including 3.8 million works deposited from universities in 88 countries and accessed by 3000 institutions. For example, if we are seeking the doctoral dissertation written by Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, we just put his name in the search engine and get the following result:

THE RISE OF AYUDHYA: A HISTORY OF SIAM IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY AND FIFTEENTH-CENTURY.

by KASETSIRI, CHARNVIT, Cornell University, 1973, 254 pages; 7318341

Once we have found a dissertation title that looks like it might be interesting for our research, we can see if it is available free online or from the TU Library. In the case of Ajarn Charnvit’s thesis, the TU Library owns copies which are shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus, the General Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit Campus, and the Theses Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, U3 level.

The student may have further concerns:

What if the TU Library does not own a copy of the dissertation and it is not available free online?

Our suggestion might be:

Try to find out if the author of the thesis published a book or article based on it.

The student might ask:

Can I get a thesis from the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service?

We can advise:

The TU Library ILL service is ready to help with any research project. Many university libraries readily lend books from their collections to our students and ajarns. But they may have a policy of not lending theses and dissertations, because copies may be rare or unique.

The student could say:

Does that mean I can’t even see a few pages of a dissertation?

We can answer:

Some university libraries permit scanning a few pages from a thesis and sending them by email with ILL. 

(To be continued…)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)