FINDING THESES AND DISSERTATIONS Dissertations or theses are documents submitted by candidates for master s or doctoral degrees, and present the authors research hypotheses and findings. They are important resources for research across academic disciplines. They also serve as benchmarks for students beginning their post-graduate studies, particularly with regard to presentation, structure, research methods and citation styles, and they usually provide comprehensive reading lists on the subjects under investigation. Before you embark on your master s or doctoral degree, you are required to establish that your intended research will not duplicate work completed previously. This can be done by searching databases specialising in, or that include, theses and dissertations. To access go to http://www.unisa.ac.za/library, click on e-resources, Theses & dissertations. South African theses and dissertations Nexus Database of the National Research Foundation (NRF) This database lists current and completed South African dissertations and theses, and research projects funded by the NRF. English titles are given for projects in other languages. Abstracts are included and a limited number of records contain links to the full text. Please contact your Personal Librarian for the user ID and password in order to access this database. Union Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations (UCTD) The Union Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations (UCTD) contains bibliographic records of theses and dissertations at master s and doctoral level submitted to universities in South Africa since 1918. It is updated annually so use it in conjunction with Dissertations and Theses (Proquest) and the Nexus (NRF) database. Honorary doctorates are also included.
SACat SACat is the national catalogue of Southern Africa and includes bibliographic records for theses. Limit the material type to thesis. Current and Completed Research Current and completed research projects in South Africa Unisa Electronic Theses and Dissertations The UnisaETD is an open access digital repository of electronic versions of Unisa theses and dissertations since 2003. It also includes those completed by Unisa staff at other academic institutions. Accessing the ETD via the UIR Go to the Library webpage at http://www.unisa.ac.za/library Click on Institutional Repository under Online collections On the UIR page, click on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, under Communities in UNISA Institutional Repository Search options The search interface will present a small grey square in the centre of the page. At the top of the square is a drop-down menu with the default set at the recommended setting for Electronic Theses and Dissertations settings may however be changed to search only Theses from other institutions by Unisa staff members, or the Unisa ETD only.
Keyword function: this allows you to search the Unisa ETD using keywords relevant to your topic. The use of single and simple keywords is recommended at this stage, since the collection itself is still relatively small. Type your keyword in the search box Click on Go to execute the search, or press Enter Browsing function: this allows you to search the Unisa ETD by title, author and subjects (presented alphabetically), and by date range. The date range can be arranged by chronological or reverse year order by clicking on the appropriate hyperlinks. Search results On the Search Results page, 10 item hits are displayed per page with fields arranged horizontally for date of issue, title, and author/s. The results page does not have a marking facility. To open a brief record of the thesis or dissertation, click on the hyperlinked title of your choice. Each record displays the title, author/s, keywords, date of issue, an abstract, and a description indicating whether it is a master s or doctoral study. For a full record, click on Show full item record at the bottom of the page. To open the full-text version of the thesis or dissertation, click on View/Open. Single or multiple files of the documents are available in pdf (portable document format) To save or print the contents of the file/s, use the save and/or print functions of the Adobe Acrobat software, rather than the browser functions.
International theses Australasian Digital Theses Programme This is a collection of digital theses produced by the post-graduate research students at Australian and New Zealand universities. The theses are available worldwide via the web. The aim of the programme is to provide access to, and promote Australian research to an international audience. Dissertations and Theses Full-text This is probably the most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. It is the official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress. It also includes dissertation and thesis citations from around the world (including South Africa) from 1861 to the present together with the full text of most of the dissertations added since 1997. Dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertation publishing partnerships with leading academic institutions worldwide and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations through UMI's Digital Archiving and Access Program. Full-text dissertations are archived as submitted by the degree-granting institution, so some are in native PDF and some are in PDF image.
Index to Theses A comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716. Since 2008, a direct link to the full text is provided when available. Theses Canada Portal The National Library of Canada compiles this comprehensive collection of bibliographic records for Canadian theses completed since 1965. Full-text, electronic versions are added to this portal wherever available. WorldCat Theses This database consists of all dissertations, theses and published material based on theses catalogued by worldwide OCLC member libraries (including Unisa). All subjects are covered but only bibliographic entries are provided.