Help : Research Strategy and Process: Finding Specific Types of Material:  

Locating Dissertations

• Locating theses and dissertations written by Cornell degree candidates.
• Locating theses and dissertations written by degree candidates at other institutions.

Locating theses and dissertations written by Cornell degree candidates:

• Using ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database to find Cornell PhD dissertations
• Using the Dissertation Abstracts database to find Cornell PhD dissertations
• Using the Library Catalog to find by title or author
• Strategies for browsing
• Full-text, online in eCommons@Cornell: Selected dissertations are available online from the Graduate School's collection in the eCommons@Cornell (Cornell's online institutional repository).
  Please note: Only those authors who have chosen to submit their dissertation online will appear in eCommons@Cornell and the author also decides whether to make the full dissertation or only the abstract available.
• Purchasing dissertations

Using ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database to find Cornell PhD dissertations:

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database contains records for PhD dissertations from 1861-Present and allows you to search via keyword, date, or institution. This is often the fastest way to find electronic versions of Cornell dissertations.

There are two ways to find Cornell dissertations. You can search Dissertations & Theses @ Cornell University and the Weill Medical College, a subset of Proquest Dissertations and Theses or go to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, choose the Advanced Search. In a search box, type Cornell and from the adjacent drop-down menu, select School name/code. Enter keywords in the remaining search boxes to target your search. From the results you may use the citations to search the Cornell Library Catalog for individual titles. In some cases, results will have the full-text of the dissertation and/or links to purchase the dissertation.

Using the Dissertation Abstracts database to find Cornell PhD dissertations:

Dissertation Abstracts contains records for PhD dissertations from 1861-1980 and allows you to perform a precise search to identify relevant theses so that you can search for individual theses by title in the Cornell Library Catalog.

In Dissertation Abstracts, choose the Advanced Search. In the first Terms box type Cornell, and from the drop-down menu immediately below, select School Name(SN). In the remaining Terms boxes enter keywords or use the Thesaurus to explore the Dissertation Abstracts list of subject terms. From the result page you can select the Get it! Cornell link to find the relevant library catalog record for a dissertation or you can manually search for individual theses by title or author in the Cornell Library Catalog.

Using the Library Catalog to find by title or author

The Cornell Library Catalog contains records for PhD dissertations and Master's theses written by Cornell degree candidates.* The catalog records provide information about the library location and availability of the theses and dissertations.

*Please note: Some records for dissertations and theses published prior to 1973 may not be available in the online catalog. If you cannot locate the record for a thesis in the catalog, please contact a reference desk for additional assistance.

The following are some general strategies for locating Cornell dissertations and theses in the Cornell Library collections.

By title:

• From the Library Gateway, click on the link to the Library Catalog.
• Choose Basic Search.
• In the Search for: box, enter the title of the thesis or dissertation. Remember to omit initial articles such as "a" or "the".
• Under the Search by: column, title is highlighted. This is the default setting.
• Click the Search button.

For more information on searching by title, click here.

By author:

• From the Library Gateway, click on the link to the Library Catalog.
• Choose Basic Search.
• In the Search for: box, enter the author's name (last name, first).
• Under the Search by: column, click author.
• Click the Search button.

For more information on searching by author, click here.

Strategies for browsing:

• From the Library Gateway, click on the link to the Library Catalog.
• Choose the Guided Keyword search.
• In the first search box, enter some key words.*
• In the next search box, enter the terms Cornell and thesis. In the Search in: box, to the right, use the pull-down menu to highlight Notes. This directs the catalog to search for these terms in the Notes field of the library record.
• Click the Search button.

*Please note: Many catalog records for theses and dissertations do not include subject headings. In these cases, the keywords entered will search only title words or terms found in the notes field of the record. Subject headings are available for theses currently cataloged in Mann, Hotel, and Law.

Strategies for browsing theses records that lack subject headings:

Many theses and dissertations are organized by degree program using a general Library of Congress Classification. For example, theses in the field of mathematics will begin with the call number Thesis QA 10. Click here for a list of degree programs with call number classifications. Knowing this classification, you can construct a call number browse* in the online catalog to retrieve a list of theses by thesis call number. To browse a thesis call number classification, choose Basic Search, then enter the term thesis and add the first two letters of the classification. Do not enter the number. For example, to find Thesis QA 10, enter Thesis QA.

*Please note: After entering the Thesis 2-letter classification, it may be necessary to scroll down or move forward through several pages to find the call number range for the degree program. The system does not necessarily order the results for thesis call numbers from smaller-to-larger numbers. For example, the range for QA 10 appears after the range for QA 70.

For theses published before 2000, it is also possible to construct a thesis call number search using the Guided Keyword search. This is possible because, in an earlier online system, the call number was entered into a local call number field that is picked up by the keyword search.

From the Cornell Library Catalog, choose a Guided Keyword search. Enter the term thesis and the thesis classification number. Use the pull-down menu to choose [as a phrase]. This search will return theses and dissertations published before 2000.

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Full-text, online in eCommons@Cornell:

Some authors have chosen to make their dissertations available in full-text online via the Graduate School's collection in the eCommons@Cornell, Cornell's online institutional repository. Those that are openly available to the Cornell community and the general public can be found at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/35. Those that are online but closed to the Cornell community and the general public (though abstracts are viewable) can be found at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/47 (Permission to view closed dissertations can be requested from the author by using the contact form at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/contact.jsp; your request will be forwarded to the author).

You can search or browse the dissertations by title, author or date. Click on the title of the dissertation and choose View/Open to get the free PDF.

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Locating dissertations written by degree candidates at other institutions:

Both the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, and Dissertation Abstracts databases provides subject, title and author indexing to PhD dissertations accepted at accredited institutions throughout the United States as well as an increasing number of papers accepted abroad.

Please note: The Dissertation Abstracts database does not provide access to Master's theses.

• Cornell Library Catalog:

  Occasionally, a dissertation from another institution is selected for the Cornell collection. To locate these items, search by title or author in the Library Catalog.

• Borrowing dissertations from other institutions:

  In many cases, it is also possible to borrow dissertations from other institutions through Interlibrary Loan.

• Purchasing dissertations:

  If a dissertation listed in the Dissertation Abstracts database is not available for loan, it is usually possible to purchase a copy. Interlibrary loan can initiate the purchase request and bill you upon receipt of the item. For additional information about purchasing theses, see University Microfilms, Inc.(UMI)

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