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Library Subject Guides

2. Find & Manage Research Literature: Find Theses

A guide to finding and managing your literature

Theses from NZ

Online: NZresearch.org.nz links to full-text research online at New Zealand universities, polytechnics, and other research organisations, including theses.

Print theses can usually be interloaned under strict conditions.

Overseas theses

Overseas Theses

Recent theses from overseas are increasingly made available online. Older theses can be difficult to interloan and may have to be purchased,

United States (with some international content)

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 
Titles and abstracts of theses from 1861. Theses from 1997 include 24-page previews. All ProQuest theses can be easily acquired via Interloan

OAIster
Wide range of full-text material - set the Content option to limit to theses/dissertations.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Access to full-text of theses from participating institutions.

Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD)
OATD is a discovery service intended to put researchers and scholars in touch with the Open Access content in ETD collections.

American Doctoral Dissertations
American Doctoral Dissertations, is an open-access database built to assist researchers in locating both historic and contemporary dissertations and theses.

Australia

Trove
Records of theses at all levels, including Honours, etc.

Canada

Theses Canada Portal
Titles and abstracts of Canadian theses. Select "Electronic theses" to limit to theses with full-text only.

Europe

DART-Europe E-theses Portal
Access to full-text of theses from participating European institutions.

Sweden

DIVA
Access to a large number of Swedish Universities' theses repositories

France

SUDOC
Records of a wide-range of material in academic libraries. You can limit to theses under "Type de publication".

Germany and Switzerland

Dissertations Online
Access to full-text of theses listed in the German and Swiss National Libraries.

United Kingdom

EThOS

Search over 350000 doctoral theses. Download instantly for your research, or order a scanned copy quickly and easily.

Other Sources

Many subject-specific databases include records of theses and dissertations.

Canterbury theses

The Library holds a copy of all theses completed at the University of Canterbury.

Online: All non-embargoed UC PhD theses are digitized and can be downloaded from the UC Research Repository (open access). Masters theses are in progress. To request digitisation of a specific thesis email
collections@libr.canterbury.ac.nz

It may take up to 10 working days to complete this request.

Embargoes: Some theses may be unavailable until a certain date due to sensitive content. You may wish to contact the author for more information.

Print:  Theses on the open shelves can be borrowed. Theses in storage can be requested online through our catalogue and used within the Macmillan Brown Library: the delivery timeframe is the following working day.

Finding theses

You can search in the Library Catalogue by: Author, Title, Keyword

Enter the terms thesis and Canterbury
followed by the subject discipline, e.g. thesis canterbury chemistry
NB: This may find theses in other subjects, e.g. thesis canterbury history picks up theses in art history, business history etc, while thesis canterbury philosophy will find PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) theses in all subjects. For these cases, some subject guides include thesis lists, including for classics and philosophy