british library catalogue phd thesis

Finding UK theses

The Bodleian Libraries hold copies of some UK theses. These are listed on SOLO  and may be ordered for delivery to a reading room. 

These theses are not all catalogued in a uniform way. Adding the word 'thesis' as a keyword in SOLO may help, but this is unlikely to find all theses, and may find published works based upon theses as well as unpublished theses.

Card catalogue  

Some early theses accepted for higher degrees and published before 1973 are held in the Bodleian Libraries but are not yet catalogued on SOLO. These holdings can be found in the Foreign Dissertations Catalogue card index.

To request access to material in the catalogue, speak to library staff at the Main Enquiry Desk in the Lower Reading Room of the Old Bodleian Library, or contact us via  [email protected]  or phone (01865 277162). 

Other finding aids

Proquest dissertations & theses.

You can use ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global  to locate theses accepted for higher degrees at universities in the UK and Ireland since 1716. The service also provides abstracts of these theses.

Library Hub Discover

You can use Library Hub Discover to search the online catalogues of some of the UK’s largest university research libraries to see if a thesis is held by another UK library.

EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service, managed by the British Library. It aims to provide a national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK higher education institutions, with free access to the full text of many theses. It has around 500,000 records for theses awarded by over 120 institutions.

UTREES - University Theses in Russian, Soviet, and East European Studies 1907–

UTREES is a bibliographical database of research in the British Isles. The database has been continuously extended from the printed volume, most recently with 202 recent theses added in 2021. The database lists details of over 6,000 doctoral and selected masters’ theses from British and Irish universities. It covers research relating to Eastern and Central Europe, Russia and the area of the former USSR, including Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia.

Individual universities

You can also go to individual UK universities' sites for their online theses repositories.

You can purchase copies of Cambridge University theses through the Cambridge University Library's online order form . There is a standard charge of £75 (plus VAT and postage). White Rose ETheses Online is an online repository of doctoral theses from the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. It is part of a national and international network of open access online databases which promote access to research outputs. Many theses have been digitised by the British Library as part of the EThOS. However, there have been instances where theses are available via WhiteRose eTheses Online before they reach EThOS.  

Ordering UK theses

Many theses from other UK universities are available from the British Library's EThOS service.  Unfortunately, this service is currently unavailable due to a cyber attack on the British Library.  

You can also request theses from other UK universities as an inter-library request .

Please note that it may not be possible to obtain some theses due to restrictions on lending placed by the author of the thesis or the institution at which it is held.

Theses and dissertation: Finding a UK thesis

• Finding a Sussex thesis
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The Electronic Theses Online System

The Electronic Theses Online System is a service from the British Library that provides online access to the full-text of UK doctoral theses. It contains over 380,000+ records of doctoral theses from UK Higher Education Institutions. Many of these have already been digitised and are available for immediate download.

Can I request UK theses from other universities from the Library?

You no longer request theses from other universities through Sussex University's Interlibrary Requests service - you can access them directly via EThOS.

Do I need to register?

You do not need to register to search the 380,000+ records in the EThOS database, but you will need to register if you would like to download a thesis.

Are immediate downloads available?

If the thesis in which you are interested has already been digitised, you will be able to download it immediately without charge. If the thesis you need has not yet been digitised, there will be a short delay whilst digitisation takes place. You will then be notified by EThOS when the thesis is ready to be downloaded. Once the thesis has been digitised it is then available for immediate download by any other user.

Are all theses digitised?

Some theses cannot be digitised for copyright reasons. If this is the case with the thesis you need, please inform the Interlibrary Requests team who will investigate whether a hard copy can be borrowed directly from the relevant university.

Does this service cost me anything?

On rare occasions you may be asked by EThOS to pay for the digitisation of a thesis. This is because, although the majority of institutions participating in EThOS have agreed to pay for the digitisation of their own theses on request, some institutions have not.

In such cases, the Library will pay the cost of digitisation provided that funding is available. Please contact the Research Support team on Tel: 01273 877941 (int 7941) or Email: [email protected] with the full details of your request.

image copyright: The British Library

Useful Links

Library Search

• Browse SRO theses Browse theses added to Sussex Research Online
• EThOS A service from the British Library that provides online access to the fulltext of UK doctoral theses. The EThOS database contains over 300,000+ records of doctoral theses from UK Higher Education Institutions.
• Copyright guide A practical guide on copyright issues in your thesis.
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• Last Updated: Feb 9, 2022 1:24 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.sussex.ac.uk/theses

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Finding SOAS PhD Theses in the Library Catalogue

All SOAS PhD theses can be found through the  Library catalogue and this will tell you if there is a digital copy which can be viewed online.

• Search by author or title if you know the details of the particular thesis you would like to see
• To browse our PhD thesis collection enter ‘Thesis’ in the search box and select ‘Classmark’ in the drop-down menu
• To limit your search of theses to a particular subject then click on ‘Advanced’ select ‘Add Search Field’ and enter keywords into the new search box
• If a digital copy of the PhD thesis is available for you to view online there will either be a note in the catalogue record or a separate entry for the digital copy

Using Printed Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• SOAS keeps printed copies of all PhD Theses and they can be consulted in our Special Collections Reading Room on Level F
• All printed PhD theses need to be ordered before you visit the Reading Room. Once you have found the PhD thesis you need you can fill in an online order form through the ‘Order archive material’ link from the catalogue record of the PhD thesis. Alternatively you can fill in an order form available from the Library Enquiry Desk or Special Collections Reading Room
• Before you consult any SOAS PhD thesis in the Special Collections Reading Room you will be asked to fill in a Data Protection Declaration
• You are permitted to photograph a maximum of 5% of a PhD thesis or one complete chapter (whichever is the greatest) for personal research purposes only
• Please note that some of our printed PhD theses are currently unavailable to consult in Special Collections because they are being digitized. If this is a case you will find a note on the Library Catalogue record for the PhD thesis
• If the printed thesis you need is affected please write to [email protected] for further assistance

Using Digital Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• A significant number of SOAS PhD theses have been made available freely online (with permission from the author) through SOAS Research Online since 2011
• You can browse the latest PhD theses via SOAS Research Online or you can search by author or title if you know the details of the thesis you need
• Some PhD theses in SOAS Research Online are restricted for a period of time at the request of the author. They will only become available digitally once this restriction period has expired
• A number of our PhD theses (dated before 2011) are available via the British Library EThOS service. You can search the EThOS database to check if a PhD thesis is available
• SOAS will be making a significant proportion of our PhD thesis collection available online in 2018 due to our work with Proquest who are digitizing our backrun of PhD Theses. If you cannot find a digital copy through the SOAS Library catalogue then please check ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses database

Finding PhD theses from Other Institutions

To find PhD theses produced at other institutions we recommend you use the following resources

• British Library EThOS Service
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection
• EBSCO Open Dissertations
• DART - Europe E-Theses Portal
• Shodhganga - Indian Theses
• Theses Canada Portal
• SOAS Interlibrary Loan Service
• Other Library Catalogues

SOAS PhD Digitization Project

SOAS is currently working with  Proquest to digitize our entire collection of PhD theses. The results of this project will mean that theses will be made available to anyone to read, without charge, via SOAS Research Online . In addition, a copy will be added to ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses online database, a very well established database used by students and researchers internationally.

Please note that this may affect access to the printed library copy of some theses in 2018, if this is the case there will be a note in the catalogue records of the individual thesis. Once a PhD thesis is added to SOAS Research Online you will be able to find a link to the digital copy via the SOAS Library Catalogue.

We have written to our SOAS PhD graduates by letter and email to ask authors to opt-out of the project if they do not want their thesis to be digitized. If you are an author of a SOAS PhD thesis and did not receive this communication and do not want your thesis to be included in the project please let us know by writing to [email protected] Please note any thesis submitted from 2011 onwards is not included in this project as authors have already selected whether they wish to have their thesis digitized and these existing agreements will stand.

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• Last Updated: Apr 24, 2024 3:02 PM
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PhD –> BHO –> BL –> PhD: linking British History Online’s thesis data to the British Library

Dec 7, 2020 | British History Online , Features & Articles

By Jonathan Blaney

In this post, Jonathan Blaney—editor of British History Online —explains the latest stage in BHO’s project recording the history of History PhDs in the UK and Ireland. Earlier this year we completed work to digitize, index and publish records of nearly 30,000 theses awarded between 1901 and 2014. These records, derived from historical data gathering exercises by the IHR, are now freely available on British History Online. In an earlier post we described this data and how it might be used to chart trends in History PhD research over the decades.

Here Jonathan explains his latest work to add links from thousands of doctorate listings in BHO to EThOS, the British Library’s online catalogue of all UK PhDs. As a result it’s now possible to browse BHO for theses in your field, link to the BL and from there (where available) click through to digital copy of the full thesis.

British History Online has recently published two sets of listings: theses in history awarded between 1970 and 2014 , (7000 records) and an earlier set of theses awarded from 1900 to 1970 in the UK and Ireland (22,000 records). The listings are free to read on the website and the underlying data is also freely available to download if people want to use it to look for trends in the writing of history, or the history profession, over that period.

But what if you want to read one of the listed theses?

Many readers will know that the British Library runs an online service called EThOS , which lists doctoral theses awarded in the UK. Going back to the eighteenth century, this listing now numbers about 600,000 theses. At a minimum EThOS will let you discover the awarding institution, who should hold a copy of the thesis, but EThOS frequently offers a link to the thesis on an institutional repository or its own copy for download.

If you know about EThOS then it’s relatively easy to go from British History Online to EThOS and manually search for the thesis you are interested in. But we decided to try to add links from our listing of a particular thesis to its listing on EThOS for the 22,000 theses in our 1970-2014 data set.

From the outset we knew this would not be very easy, because the title on our listing often varies from the title on EThOS. To the human eye these differences may not even register: it’s obviously the same thesis! But a computer program would compare two titles that are exactly the same except for an extra space in one, and conclude that there is no match. Computers are very literal. Our first attempts at matching literally but case-insensitively only gave us a success rate of about 10%.

The problem is that if we relax the criteria for a match, using fuzzy matching of some kind, we run the risk of numerous false positives: matches to the wrong thesis on EThOS. There are 300 theses on EThOS for every thesis on BHO, so this a very real possibility. We think adding the wrong link is worse than not having a link at all.

After a bit of trial and error we used these steps for our matching process:

• truncate each thesis to 23 characters
• match case-insensitively
• match on the author surname as well, to cut down false positives
• make all punctuation optional, with an optional space before things like colons

This proved to be a reasonable compromise. We matched around 70% of the titles we were hoping to find on EThOS.

There were a few false positives, but each would very likely match a true positive as well, so we could manually check these by looking for BHO theses with multiple matches.

Take, for example a thesis authored by Jones which begins:

British Foreign Policy …

That is already 23 characters and can easily match a different thesis authored by a Jones. We had to accept a small amount of these as the price for sufficient correct matches, and the time taken to manually check theses with multiple links was quite small.

If you look at our listings now you will see lots of links, but perhaps not 70% of the 22,000 theses in our listing. There are two more caveats here, to do with the scope of EThOS. EThOS does not list non-doctoral theses, such as an M.Phil., but BHO does: these will never match. Equally, BHO lists theses awarded in Ireland, but EThOS confines itself to theses awarded in the UK, so these too will never match. We think that 70% of matchable theses have been matched: that’s just short of 11,000 thesis records in total.

So if you don’t find an EThOS link on one of our PhD listings it’s still worth looking yourself: there’s a good chance you will find it on EThOS. If you do, please contact us and send us a link so we can add it.

Where we have identified a match and added a link it’s now possible to move swiftly to the full text of your chosen thesis where this is provided on EThOS. In the example below (from our list of theses awarded in 2011) you’ll see links to 5 of the 6 titles (the missing link here is a York MA thesis which isn’t included in EThOS).

Extract from the BHO’s listing for 2010 theses

EThOS records—especially for recent theses—typically provide an abstract, so you can get a sense if it’s useful for your research. Many BL records also provide follow-on links to a copy of the dissertation itself, as for Dr Alison Ronan’s 2010 Keele thesis, ‘A small vital flame: anti-war women’s networks in Manchester, 1914-18’.

The BL’s EThOS record for Alison Ronan’s 2010 PhD thesis.

Using BHO’s thesis records in tandem with EThOS makes for a really powerful tool. BHO’s indexing of its records enables you to search across thousands of History dissertations by a range of attributes, including (to use Sara Wolfson’s record from the listing above): by subject (British and Irish History); year of completion (2010); university (e.g. Durham); chronological coverage (‘1625-1669’); temporal and thematic ‘categories’ (‘Gender and Women’ / ’16th-17th century’); index terms (‘court’ / ‘aristocracy’ etc.); and supervisor/s (Natalie Mears and Toby Osborne).

British History Online therefore provides many opportunities for searching thousands of theses for what’s of interest to you (subject, chronology, supervisor and so on). Not surprisingly, this granularity of search isn’t available on EThOS. But once you’ve found something of interest via BHO, and there’s an EThOS link, it’s now just two clicks from discovering a thesis to reading the full text.

For more on this project see our earlier blog posts ‘30,000 PhD theses now available on British History Online’ (June 2020) and ‘BHO theses completed: making the data available’ (July 2020).

British History Online (BHO) is a collection of nearly 1300 volumes of primary and secondary content relating to British and Irish history, and histories of empire and the British world. BHO also provides access to 40,000 images and 10,000 tiles of historic maps of the British Isles.

Within  BHO Premium  you’ll also find 200 volumes of prime research content via institutional and personal subscription;  trial subscriptions  are available for institutions. BHO was founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003. It’s since grown into an essential resource for teachers and researchers which is regularly updated with new content.

Jonathan Blaney is Editor of British History Online and Head of Digital Projects at the Institute of Historical Research.

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Answered By: Andrew Willan Last Updated: Apr 23, 2024     Views: 9297

DISCOVER and the Library Catalogue have been replaced by Library Search . We're busy updating all of our links, but in the meantime, please use Library Search when searching for resources or managing your Library Account.

The EThOS service is currently unavailable a result of a cyber-attack . Updates on British Library services are available via their blog .

Whilst the British Library is working to restore access to EThOS their online catalogue now provides access to digital doctoral theses held in UK institutional repositories - Using Advanced search and selecting 'Theses' from 'Material Type' dropdown menu  is recommended. To access these documents, search for a thesis and then click on a title of interest to view the full details for that work. The link can be found under the section labelled "View Online - External Resource Available" (in green) just above the "I want this" section (in red) at the bottom of the page.

See the following examples of finding theses that are available ( Available Online in green with a link to the thesis) and those that aren't (red box with 'This item is not currently available' text).

Available thesis

Unavailable thesis

EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) provides access to UK doctoral theses from The British Library, in association with higher education institutions in the UK. Most available theses are PhDs, but also other types of doctoral thesis, e.g. D.Ed., Mus.D., D.Eng (for M Phil and other theses contact our Get It For Me  service).

The EThOS service is currently unavailable. Updates on British Library services are available via their blog .

The British Library online catalogue now provides access to digital doctoral theses held in UK institutional repositories. To access these documents, search for a thesis and then click on a title of interest to view the full details for that work. The link can be found under the section labelled "View Online - External Resource Available" (in green) just above the "I want this" section (in red) at the bottom of the page.

You can search for all the UK theses currently listed in the British Library Catalogue and download any of the full-text theses that are already held in EThOS, either directly or via links to an institution’s own repository.  EThOS replaced the British Theses Service - microfilms are no longer available from the British Library.

How to use EThOS

To read or download theses:

• register for your own personal account with EThOS
• search the database yourself
• before you can download a thesis you must accept the terms and conditions of use; they protect the rights of the author or other rights owners
• if you need help, get in touch with the  Inter-Library Loans Team  or your Liaison Librarian .

If the doctoral thesis you want is held by EThOS you can download it immediately free of charge.

How to request a thesis that is not available for immediate download

If a digitised version of a thesis cannot be made available, EThOS will let you know. You can then make a request  through the  Get It For Me  service,  who will try to obtain the original copy of the thesis direct from the institution that holds it.

NOTE: Non-members of the University of Liverpool who wish to consult UoL theses and are unable to visit the Library in person should use the EThOS service to access them.

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Theses & dissertations: home, access to theses and dissertations from other institutions and from the university of cambridge.

This guide provides information on searching for theses of Cambridge PhDs and for theses of UK universities and universities abroad. 

For information and guidance on depositing your thesis as a cambridge phd, visit the cambridge office of scholarly communication pages on theses here ., this guide gives essential information on how to obtain theses using the british library's ethos service. .

On the last weekend of October, the British Library became the victim of a major cyber-attack. Essential digital services including the BL catalogue, website and online learning resources went dark, with research services like the EThOS collection of more than 600,000 doctoral theses suddenly unavailable. The BL state that they anticipate restoring more services in the next few weeks, but disruption to certain services is now expected to persist for several months. For the latest news on the attack and information on the restoration of services, please follow the BL blog here:  Knowledge Matters blog  and access the LibGuide page here:  British Library Outage Update - Electronic Legal Deposit - LibGuides at University of Cambridge Subject Libraries

A full list of resources for searching theses online is provided by the Cambridge A-Z, available here .

University of Cambridge theses

Finding a cambridge phd thesis online via the institutional repository.

The University's institutional repository, Apollo , holds full-text digital versions of over 11,000 Cambridge PhD theses and is a rapidly growing collection deposited by Cambridge Ph.D. graduates. Theses in Apollo can be browsed via this link . More information on how to access theses by University of Cambridge students can be found on the access to Cambridge theses webpage.   The requirement for impending PhD graduates to deposit a digital version in order to graduate means the repository will be increasing at a rate of approximately 1,000 per year from this source.   About 200 theses are added annually through requests to make theses Open Access or via requests to digitize a thesis in printed format.

Locating and obtaining a copy of a Cambridge PhD thesis (not yet available via the repository)

Theses can be searched in iDiscover .  Guidance on searching for theses in iDiscover can be found here .   Requests for consultation of printed theses, not available online, should be made at the Manuscripts Reading Room (Email:  [email protected] Telephone: +44 (0)1223 333143).   Further information on the University Library's theses, dissertations and prize essays collections can be consulted at this link .

Researchers can order a copy of an unpublished thesis which was deposited in print form either through the Library’s  Digital Content Unit via the image request form , or, if the thesis has been digitised, it may be available in the Apollo repository. Copies of theses may be provided to researchers in accordance with the  law  and in a manner that is common across UK libraries.  The law allows us to provide whole copies of unpublished theses to individuals as long as they sign a declaration saying that it is for non-commercial research or private study.

How to make your thesis available online through Cambridge's institutional repository

Are you a Cambridge alumni and wish to make your Ph.D. thesis available online? You can do this by depositing it in Apollo the University's institutional repository. Click here for further information on how to proceed.    Current Ph.D students at the University of Cambridge can find further information about the requirements to deposit theses on the Office of Scholarly Communication theses webpages.

UK Theses and Dissertations

Electronic copies of Ph.D. theses submitted at over 100 UK universities are obtainable from EThOS , a service set up to provide access to all theses from participating institutions. It achieves this by harvesting e-theses from Institutional Repositories and by digitising print theses as they are ordered by researchers using the system. Over 250,000 theses are already available in this way. Please note that it does not supply theses submitted at the universities of Cambridge or Oxford although they are listed on EThOS.

Registration with EThOS is not required to search for a thesis but is necessary to download or order one unless it is stored in the university repository rather than the British Library (in which case a link to the repository will be displayed). Many theses are available without charge on an Open Access basis but in all other cases, if you are requesting a thesis that has not yet been digitised you will be asked to meet the cost. Once a thesis has been digitised it is available for free download thereafter.

When you order a thesis it will either be immediately available for download or writing to hard copy or it will need to be digitised. If you order a thesis for digitisation, the system will manage the process and you will be informed when the thesis is available for download/preparation to hard copy.

See the Search results section of the  help page for full information on interpreting search results in EThOS.

EThOS is managed by the British Library and can be found at http://ethos.bl.uk . For more information see About EThOS .

World-wide (incl. UK) theses and dissertations

Electronic versions of non-UK theses may be available from the institution at which they were submitted, sometimes on an open access basis from the institutional repository. A good starting point for discovering freely available electronic theses and dissertations beyond the UK is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) , which facilitates searching across institutions. Information can also usually be found on the library web pages of the relevant institution.

The DART Europe etheses portal lists several thousand full-text theses from a group of European universities.

The University Library subscribes to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses  (PQDT) database which from August 31 2023 is accessed on the Web of Science platform.  To search this index select it from the Web of Science "Search in" drop-down list of databases (available on the Documents tab on WoS home page)

PQDT includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations, representing 700 leading academic institutions worldwide from 1861 to the present day. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The University Library only subscribes to the abstracting & indexing version of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database and NOT the full text version.  A fee is payable for ordering a dissertation from this source.   To obtain the full text of a dissertation as a downloadable PDF you can submit your request via the University Library Inter-Library Loans department (see contact details below). NB this service is only available to full and current members of the University of Cambridge.

Alternatively you can pay yourself for the dissertation PDF on the PQDT platform. Link from Web of Science record display of any thesis to PQDT by clicking on "View Details on ProQuest".  On the "Preview" page you will see an option "Order a copy" top right.  This will allow you to order your own copy from ProQuest directly.

Dissertations and theses submitted at non-UK universities may also be requested on Inter-Library Loan through the Inter-Library Loans department (01223 333039 or 333080, [email protected] )

• Last Updated: Dec 20, 2023 9:47 AM
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Finding theses: Finding Reading University theses & dissertations

• Finding Reading University theses & dissertations
• Finding theses produced in other institutions

From March 2020 all PhD theses received by the Library are in electronic format. These are listed on the Library catalogue and the University's institutional repository, CentAUR. Prior to this the Library received a print copy of all theses accepted for the degrees of PhD and MPhil. There is also some online availability of earlier theses. Print only theses may be digitised on request via British Library's EThOS service (fees apply). 

Masters dissertations are not held by the Library . They can usually be consulted in the relevant University school or department.

Finding theses on the Enterprise catalogue (print and online)

All PhD and MPhil theses received by the Library in print or electronically are included in the Library catalogue. Theses received since 1979 have full entries on the Enterprise catalogue. Theses received prior to 1979 have a brief entry (author, title, department and year) on Enterprise. There are links to any electronic versions in the University's institutional repository, CentAUR, from the catalogue entry for the title.

Use the search box below to search for topic and when viewing your results limit them to the Format 'Thesis'.

You can also search for theses produced by a specific School/Department searching for the department name (for example, University of Reading Chemistry) and then limiting your results to the Format 'Thesis'. Please note that there have been a large number of name changes for Schools/Departments, so you might need to try several searches to find all possible entries.

Finding e-theses

Search the University's institutional repository, CentAUR, to find PhD theses submitted since 2015. Note that some theses might not be available to read online if they have an embargo applied.

Some older University of Reading theses have been digitised and made available via the British Library EThOS Service. 

CentAUR (Central Archive at the University of Reading) is the University of Reading's institutional repository for research publications and equivalent research outputs.

Lists published items, including journal and conference proceedings, books and book sections, and other formats that constitute the research outputs of the University. Where copyright permits, the author's final versions of papers (that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication), or the equivalent multimedia formats, are included. The main period covered is 2003 onwards. Find out more about CentAUR Help and guidance CentAUR help Contact the CentAUR team for additional advice on using this resource

References for British PhD theses. Includes some full-text, and the ability to request theses for scanning where not already available (a cost might apply). No password required, although you need to register with the service to order a thesis - Find out about ordering a British thesis via EThOS

Search across 600,000+ British PhD theses for free and order full text quickly and easily The service automatically harvests e-theses from Institutional Repositories and digitises paper theses from participating institutions.  List of institutions participating in EThOS Help and guidance Find out about ordering a British thesis via EThOS Search tips for Ethos Contact inter-library loans for further information about requesting theses via EThOS

Consulting a print thesis

Theses are kept on Closed Access and have to be collected for you. The most recent ones are in the University Library, older ones are kept in our Off-site Store. Most theses can be consulted within the Library - they cannot be borrowed. A few theses are not available for consultation, and these are marked as "restricted". Full details of the duration of such restrictions can be found on the catalogue.

Request a thesis by filling in the online form on Enterprise - when viewing the full details of the thesis on the catalogue click on the 'Request Closed Access or Store Items' link on the right-hand side of the screen. See this page for more detailed guidance:

• Requesting items from the Store & Closed Access

Useful links for current research students

• Electronic deposition of doctoral theses Guidance on depositing your thesis electronically.
• Copyright and theses This page outlines your responsibilities when using third party material in your thesis.
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• Last Updated: Apr 23, 2024 1:44 PM
• URL: https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/theses

PhD theses: Home

You can search for records of LBS theses via LBS Research Online, our library catalogue and EThOS. NB: LBS doctoral theses are subject to a ten year embargo .

LBS Research Online

LBS Research Online is the London Business School institutional repository. As well as theses, it contains research produced by our faculty.

Search LBS Research Online

Library catalogue

In the advanced search mode, select type = thesis from the first drop-down box. For print copies of theses, you will need to request access by email.

Search the catalogue

EThOS is the UK's online national thesis service, run by the British Library. It contains approximately 500,000 records.

Search EThOS

Need help? Please email [email protected]

• Last Updated: Feb 5, 2024 11:12 AM
• URL: https://library.london.edu/theses

University of St Andrews

Theses: searching for st andrews theses.

• How to submit your thesis (Key information)
• How to submit your thesis (Additional information)
• Searching for St Andrews theses
• Searching for theses from other institutions

Finding a thesis using Library Search

You can search for a thesis in Library Search in the same way that you would search for any other book.

The results will give you a variety of ways to access a thesis because St Andrews theses are indexed in multiple databases.

The first result provides access to the thesis through EThOS, ( the British Library's full text catalogue of UK doctoral research theses available online . ) If you click on the green button, it will take you to the thesis page on EThOS. Here, you can access the full text of the thesis by clicking either of these links:

The second result will show you the record for the thesis that the library has created. Click on the title and it will take you to a page where you can access information about the thesis, such as the classmark of the print copy and a link to the St Andrews Research Repository, where you can access the full text, (if not embargoed).

Digitisation and requesting a full text digital copy of a St Andrews theses

Our policy  is to provide digital delivery of St Andrews theses wherever possible.  If you wish to consult a St Andrews thesis please check  the Library collections  first to discover if a digital copy is available.

From 2007, all St Andrews doctoral theses have been submitted as electronic theses and will be digitally available subject to any full text embargos being in place.  Major digitisation projects in 2016 and 2018 have made some 90% of pre 2007 St Andrews theses available digitally.  These theses date from the early twentieth century up to 2007.  Please note that some digital full text for earlier theses is still in the process of being loaded and some digitisation for unique copies of theses still has to be carried out in-house.

So, for example, if you find a thesis you want to read and there is no link to full text then you will probably see notes similar to these, asking you to contact us to give you help on accessing a digital copy:  

Here is a note in the full Library Search result:

To contact us with any electronic theses queries, please email: [email protected] .

St Andrews is also a fully participating member of the EThOS service.  EThOS is a British Library national service to provide a central source for the discovery and supply of electronic theses. St Andrews is an Open Access Sponsor of EThOS which means that we are committed to providing our theses for digitisation on demand, and requests are made available to researchers open access and free of charge.  Over 500 St Andrews theses have been digitised as a result of researcher requests via EThOS.

The service can still be used to request digitisations of any remaining St Andrews theses which have been excluded from previous digitisation projects. Once you find the details of the thesis you wish to consult on the EThOS website you can make a request for the thesis to be digitised.  If you do not find the thesis listed in the EThOS database, please follow the instructions provided.  You will be presented with an on screen form to request an unlisted thesis.

(Please note that EThOS will not charge for the standard delivery format which is a downloadable PDF, but users choosing alternative delivery formats such as print, CD/DVD will be quoted charges.)

* The British Library is continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack . Services including EThOS may be affected. Information is available on a temporary website .

Want to consult a print thesis?

You may still want to look at a print thesis.  Perhaps because of its uniqueness, or because the print can be consulted even though the electronic thesis full text is embargoed or not available for digitisation, (at the request of the thesis author).

Did you know that our earliest digitised thesis was written in 1919?

'The structure of mannitol', by Ettie Stewart Steele

( http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13088 )

If a print copy is available for consultation, it can be consulted at the Napier Reading Room, (located within the Richardson Research Library at Martyrs Kirk on North Street.)

To arrange a time to view the print copy of a thesis, please email Special Collections at [email protected] , or make an appointment using their online booking form at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/researchandenquiries/bookanappointment/ .  

Please give two working days’ notice of the time you’d like to view the thesis - this gives Special Collections time to retrieve the thesis from the deep store.

Searching in the St Andrews Research Repository

If you know that the research thesis you are looking for was awarded from St Andrews you can search for it directly in the St Andrews Research Repository .

Here you can view a  list of all theses in the Repository in title order.

You can also browse by school for theses in a particular discipline, e.g.

In the Repository record for each thesis, you'll be able to view information about the author, supervisor(s), title, date of completion, as well as project funding and embargos, where applicable.

You may also be able to read the thesis abstract and subject keywords, where present.

If the full text of a thesis is available for you to view, you will see a thumbnail of the thesis' first page in the upper left-hand corner, e.g.

Embargoed Theses

Some theses are embargoed, at the request of the author, which means that access to the print copy, electronic copy, or both copies is restricted. The three main reasons for an embargo are that any publication would be;

• commercially da maging to the researcher, the supervisor, or the University;
• professionally damaging, by virtue of precluding future publication;
• in breach of law or ethics.

If a thesis is embargoed, you will see a note on the repository webpage, e.g.

This tells you whether the print or electronic copy is restricted, and the date when the restriction ends. But please note that authors can request for restrictions to be renewed and extended.

Example Theses

• << Previous: How to submit your thesis (Additional information)
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• Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 4:33 PM
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Library Services

Here we explain how to access copies of research theses that UCL Library Services holds. There is also an increasing number of open access thesis repositories available online.

Theses held in UCL Library

Open access repositories containing the full text of selected research theses.

• Indexes of completed theses

Obtaining copies of research theses

• Open Access for Thesis: how to deposit

University of London theses

The Library holds a copy of most research degree theses completed by students registered at UCL and awarded by the UoL, including many from students at Schools and Institutes prior to merger with UCL. Theses are listed by author on the Library catalogue, Explore : they are shelved in our off-campus Store and may be retrieved for consultation (24-hour notice required) by completing the store request form or via the request link on Explore. Theses are not available for loan, either to individuals or via interlibrary loan.

Some UoL research degree theses submitted by UCL students in the areas of classical, Germanic, Latin American studies; history and law are not held: check the UoL School of Advanced Study catalogue for availability.

UCL started to award its own degrees to students registering from 2007/2008. Print copies of research theses are catalogued by author in Explore and shelved in Store; electronic versions are in many cases available on open access in UCL Discovery .

If you wish to access a thesis recorded in UCL Discovery for which the full text is subject to an access restriction or not present, it is best to contact the author directly to request a copy privately.  If this is not possible, please contact the UCL Open Access Team .

If a thesis is not available via UCL Discovery or EThOS (see below) then it might be possible to obtain a copy from our interlibrary loan service via your home university interlibrary loan department. Please contact your university library and ask them to enquire about this service with UCL's Interlibrary Loan service; e-mail [email protected] for more information.

The Library does not normally hold print copies of any theses in the following categories:

• MA, MSc, MRes, LLM theses.
• Diploma theses.
• Undergraduate dissertations.
• Theses submitted at other universities or colleges.

Further information is available in the Support for dissertations and research projects LibGuide .

A growing number of open access thesis repositories is becoming available including:

• ProQuest , holds many full text theses. You can search for dissertations and theses there.
• UCL Discovery , UCL's open access research repository, includes theses alongside other UCL publications. You can search for theses, or browse a list.
• EThOS , a database run by the British Library that aims to record all UK doctoral theses, with links to access an electronic version of the full text where available. The digitisation of theses that only exist in print form can often be requested, depending on the awarding institution and for a fee: UCL supports this process for UCL-held theses.
• The DART-Europe E-theses Portal , holds details of open access electronic theses stored in repositories across Europe.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations , includes links to a number of international search tools and portals.

Video - Using PhD theses in research: EThOS 

YouTube Widget Placeholder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8X8ai6xN-4

Indexes of completed theses (access available to members of UCL only)

Proquest dissertations & theses global (pqdt global).

PQDT Global contains over a million full-text dissertations and theses from 1861 onwards that are available for download in PDF format. The collection includes PQDT UK and Ireland content.

Many UK universities now decline to lend research theses. You may visit the awarding university or, increasingly, obtain an electronic version either from the university itself or from EThOS (see above).

Theses awarded by universities worldwide may be requested via UCL Library Services Interlending and Document Supply service . The normal charge for this service applies. Please note that theses are never available for loan: they must be consulted on Library premises only.

Open access for theses: how to deposit

Candidates for UCL research degrees are required to deposit an electronic copy of their final thesis in UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS), to be made open access in UCL's institutional repository, UCL Discovery . Theses are amongst the most highly-downloaded items in UCL Discovery . Making your thesis open access will mean that it is accessible worldwide, to anyone who wants to read it.

It is also possible, but not mandatory, to submit a print copy of your thesis to the Library for storage and preservation if you wish. We recommend submitting the print copy in cases where the electronic copy cannot be made openly available online in UCL Discovery, but you wish the print copy to be accessible to members of the Library.

Please refer to our guidance on how to deposit  for further information on the submission procedures.

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All SOAS PhD theses can be found through the Library catalogue and this will tell you if there is a digital copy which can be viewed online.

• Search by author or title if you know the details of the particular thesis you would like to see
• To browse our PhD thesis collection enter ‘Thesis’ in the search box and select ‘Classmark’ in the drop-down menu
• To limit your search of theses to a particular subject then click on ‘Advanced’ select ‘Add Search Field’ and enter keywords into the new search box
• If a digital copy of the PhD thesis is available for you to view online there will either be a note in the catalogue record or a separate entry for the digital copy

Using Printed Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• SOAS keeps printed copies of all PhD Theses and they can be consulted in our Special Collections Reading Room on Level F
• All printed PhD theses need to be ordered before you visit the Reading Room. Once you have found the PhD thesis you need you can fill in an online order form through the ‘Order archive material’ link from the catalogue record of the PhD thesis. Alternatively you can fill in an order form available from the Library Enquiry Desk or Special Collections Reading Room
• Before you consult any SOAS PhD thesis in the Special Collections Reading Room you will be asked to fill in a Data Protection Declaration
• You are permitted to photograph a maximum of 5% of a PhD thesis or one complete chapter (whichever is the greatest) for personal research purposes only

Using Digital Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• A significant number of SOAS PhD theses have been made available freely online (with permission from the author) through SOAS Research Online since 2011
• You can browse the latest PhD theses via SOAS Research Online or you can search by author or title if you know the details of the thesis you need
• Some PhD theses in SOAS Research Online are restricted for a period of time at the request of the author. They will only become available digitally once this restriction period has expired
• A number of our PhD theses (dated before 2011) are available via the British Library EThOS service. You can search the EThOS database to check if a PhD thesis is available

Finding PhD theses from Other Institutions

To find PhD theses produced at other institutions we recommend you use the following resources

• British Library EThOS Service
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: Global (access via Senate House Library)
• EBSCO Open Dissertations
• DART - Europe E-Theses Portal
• Shodhganga - Indian Theses
• Theses Canada Portal
• SOAS Interlibrary Loan Service
• Other Library Catalogues

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Theses: How to find theses: Home

Thesis or dissertation - what's the difference.

In general in the UK a dissertation is a piece of independent research carried out at undergraduate or taught postgraduate level. The term thesis refers to a piece of work undertaken for a research degree for example a PhD, MLitt, MRes. Dissertations are generally shorter than a thesis. However, in many cases and in many countries the terms thesis and dissertation are used interchangeably. Before requesting or consulting a thesis or dissertation it is advisable to check the level of degree for which it was submitted. 

Finding dissertations in the library

Dissertations undertaken as part of a taught postgraduate or undergraduate degree programme are not held in the library. You should contact the department/s concerned directly, to arrange consultation.

Practical information about submitting a Strathclyde research thesis

• Advice about submitting a thesis
• Copyright and your Thesis LibGuide
• List of thesis binding companies

Obtaining theses - Inter-Library Service

If you wish to consult a thesis from another library, which is not available electronically, you should use the Inter-Library Service . This service is available to 4th year undergraduates, postgraduates and staff. Please be aware that it may take some time to obtain a thesis from another library, particularly if the library is based overseas. 

New books about writing a thesis or dissertation

Related Guides

• Copyright & Your Thesis by Deborah Ferns Last Updated Feb 9, 2024 686 views this year

Finding Strathclyde theses

All of the theses available from the library are listed in SUPrimo . You can either:

• Search for a subject or topic of interest using the Library Collections  filter, e.g. photonic devices, and then limit your results to theses using the  Collection  >  Strathclyde theses  filter. Searching SUPrimo this way will list printed and electronic theses. 

or, if you wish to see a list of electronic theses

• Search the  Strathclyde Research  tab, e.g. photonic devices. Searching SUPrimo in this way will only display theses which can be accessed electronically, printed theses will not be included in your results list. 

If you have searched using the Library Collections filter, you may see the wording 2 versions of this record exist.  This indicates that there may be both print and electronic versions of the thesis. Click on the wording  2 version of this record exist  to display both records. 

Electronic thesis

To view an electronic theses, click on the  Online access  link. Scroll to the  View It  section and follow the link there to display the full text. You may need to enter your DS users and password to view the thesis. Here is an example of an electronic thesis record in SUPrimo. 

Print format thesis

Print theses are kept in a store and so must be requested in advance. To request a thesis, click on the wording  Available - see 'Get it' for details  as highlighted in the image below. Next, scroll to the  Get it  section and sign in to SUPrimo. Once you have signed in the  Request  option will be visible. Click on this and place your request. 

Library staff will fetch the thesis from store. We will email you when the thesis is ready for you to collect from Level 3 (entrance level) of the Library. If only one copy of the thesis is listed in SUPrimo the thesis will be a reference only item and you will not be able to borrow it from the Library. If there is a second copy listed in SUPrimo, one copy will be available for borrowing. 

If you are not able to make use of the request function in SUPrimo, please email [email protected] with the details of the thesis which you would like to consult. 

Finding non Strathclyde theses and dissertations

Many of the Library's databases will search for theses as well as journal articles and book chapters. The following databases are particularly useful for finding theses: 

Another useful source is Jisc Library Hub Discover a combined catalogue of the largest research libraries in the UK and Ireland. Searching Jisc Library Hub Discover will help you identify theses available from other universities. To limit your results to theses use the  Main Search , then limit results to  Theses  in the Material Type menu. 

• theses.fr A database to find French doctoral theses.

Why should I consult other people's theses?

• They contain research that may not have been published in any other format
• They can help you avoid duplicating research and identify areas for further research
• You can see examples of how to layout a thesis
• Last Updated: Apr 11, 2024 4:07 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.strath.ac.uk/theses

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PhD –> BHO –> BL –> PhD: linking British History Online’s thesis data to the British Library

In this post, Jonathan Blaney—editor of  British History Online —explains the latest stage in BHO’s project recording the history of History PhDs in the UK and Ireland. Earlier this year we completed work to digitize, index and publish records of nearly 30,000 theses awarded between 1901 and 2014. These records, derived from historical data gathering exercises by the IHR, are now freely available on British History Online. In an  earlier post we described this data  and how it might be used to chart trends in History PhD research over the decades.

Here Jonathan explains his latest work to add links from thousands of doctorate listings in BHO to EThOS, the British Library’s online catalogue of all UK PhDs. As a result it’s now possible to browse BHO for theses in your field, link to the BL and from there (where available) click through to digital copy of the full thesis.

British History Online has recently published two sets of listings:  theses in history awarded between 1970 and 2014 , (7000 records) and an earlier set of  theses awarded from 1900 to 1970  in the UK and Ireland (22,000 records). The listings are free to read on the website and  the underlying data is also freely available to download  if people want to use it to look for trends in the writing of history, or the history profession, over that period.

But what if you want to read one of the listed theses?

Many readers will know that the British Library runs an  online service called EThOS , which lists doctoral theses awarded in the UK. Going back to the eighteenth century, this listing now numbers about 600,000 theses. At a minimum EThOS will let you discover the awarding institution, who should hold a copy of the thesis, but EThOS frequently offers a link to the thesis on an institutional repository or its own copy for download.

If you know about EThOS then it’s relatively easy to go from British History Online to EThOS and manually search for the thesis you are interested in. But we decided to try to add links from our listing of a particular thesis to its listing on EThOS for the 22,000 theses in our 1970-2014 data set.

From the outset we knew this would not be very easy, because the title on our listing often varies from the title on EThOS. To the human eye these differences may not even register: it’s obviously the same thesis! But a computer program would compare two titles that are exactly the same except for an extra space in one, and conclude that there is no match. Computers are very literal. Our first attempts at matching literally but case-insensitively only gave us a success rate of about 10%.

The problem is that if we relax the criteria for a match, using fuzzy matching of some kind, we run the risk of numerous false positives: matches to the wrong thesis on EThOS. There are 300 theses on EThOS for every thesis on BHO, so this a very real possibility. We think adding the wrong link is worse than not having a link at all.

After a bit of trial and error we used these steps for our matching process:

• truncate each thesis to 23 characters
• match case-insensitively
• match on the author surname as well, to cut down false positives
• make all punctuation optional, with an optional space before things like colons

This proved to be a reasonable compromise. We matched around 70% of the titles we were hoping to find on EThOS.

There were a few false positives, but each would very likely match a true positive as well, so we could manually check these by looking for BHO theses with multiple matches.

Take, for example a thesis authored by  Jones  which begins:

British Foreign Policy  …

That is already 23 characters and can easily match a different thesis authored by a Jones. We had to accept a small amount of these as the price for sufficient correct matches, and the time taken to manually check theses with multiple links was quite small.

If you look at our listings now you will see lots of links, but perhaps not 70% of the 22,000 theses in our listing. There are two more caveats here, to do with the scope of EThOS. EThOS does not list non-doctoral theses, such as an M.Phil., but BHO does: these will never match. Equally, BHO lists theses awarded in Ireland, but EThOS confines itself to theses awarded in the UK, so these too will never match. We think that 70% of matchable theses have been matched: that’s just short of 11,000 thesis records in total.

So if you don’t find an EThOS link on one of our PhD listings it’s still worth looking yourself: there’s a good chance you will find it on EThOS. If you do, please  contact us  and send us a link so we can add it.

Where we have identified a match and added a link it’s now possible to move swiftly to the full text of your chosen thesis where this is provided on EThOS. In the example below (from our list of theses awarded in 2011) you’ll see links to 5 of the 6 titles (the missing link here is a York MA thesis which isn’t included in EThOS).

EThOS records—especially for recent theses—typically provide an abstract, so you can get a sense if it’s useful for your research. Many BL records also provide follow-on links to a copy of the dissertation itself, as for Dr Alison Ronan’s 2010 Keele thesis, ‘A small vital flame: anti-war women’s networks in Manchester, 1914-18’.

Using BHO’s thesis records in tandem with EThOS makes for a really powerful tool. BHO’s indexing of its records enables you to search across thousands of History dissertations by a range of attributes, including (to use Sara Wolfson’s record from the listing above): by subject (British and Irish History); year of completion (2010); university (e.g. Durham); chronological coverage (‘1625-1669’); temporal and thematic ‘categories’ (‘Gender and Women’ / ’16th-17th century’); index terms (‘court’ / ‘aristocracy’ etc.); and supervisor/s (Natalie Mears and Toby Osborne).

British History Online therefore provides many opportunities for searching thousands of theses for what’s of interest to you (subject, chronology, supervisor and so on). Not surprisingly, this granularity of search isn’t available on EThOS. But once you’ve found something of interest via BHO, and there’s an EThOS link, it’s now just two clicks from discovering a thesis to reading the full text.

For more on this project see our earlier blog posts  ‘30,000 PhD theses now available on British History Online’  (June 2020) and  ‘BHO theses completed: making the data available’   (July 2020).

British History Online  (BHO)  is a collection of nearly 1300 volumes of primary and secondary content relating to British and Irish history, and histories of empire and the British world. BHO also provides access to 40,000 images and 10,000 tiles of historic maps of the British Isles.

Within  BHO Premium  you’ll also find 200 volumes of prime research content via institutional and personal subscription;  trial subscriptions  are available for institutions. BHO was founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003. It’s since grown into an essential resource for teachers and researchers which is regularly updated with new content.

Jonathan Blaney  is Editor of British History Online and Head of Digital Projects at the Institute of Historical Research.

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• Search theses

Postgraduate research theses contain ‘a wealth of data… which can shed light on very interesting areas’ (The British Library, 2014).

You can find theses submitted by University of Manchester postgraduate research students from the late 19th Century to the present day using the Library Search box above. Or try the Advanced Search for more options (select 'Theses' from the drop-down list for ‘Material type’).

Follow the links below for more information about accessing theses submitted by Manchester researchers, as well as theses from authors all over the world.

Access to British Library EThOS - March 2024

Access to British Library EThOS  is currently unavailable due to a major technical outage affecting several of their online services.

View news and updates on the British Library website

Manchester eTheses

Doctoral theses submitted from 2010 onwards which are currently Open Access are available to view via the University’s Research Explorer.

eTheses submission

Supporting Postgraduate Research Students, Supervisors and Administrators with the submission of electronic theses.

Search ProQuest for digitised pre-2010 Manchester theses, as well as over four million theses and dissertations from institutions around the world.

Theses Library Guide

Consult our Theses Library Guide for guidance on how to locate and access theses from UK and International institutions.

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Today we’ve published a paper about the cyber-attack that took place last October. Its goal is to share our understanding of what happened and to help others learn from our experience. You can read the paper on our website, and hear from our CEO, Sir Roly Keating, in our latest blog .

Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music – on sale now

Our latest exhibition is the first major exhibition of its kind anywhere in the world, travelling back five centuries to discover the layered Black experiences that have birthed a thriving musical culture and history. Beyond the Bassline opens 26 April and you can book your tickets today .

Support our work

As a charity, we work to preserve and share our collection of over 170 million items, which grows every day.

Please email [email protected] (08.30 - 16.30 Monday to Friday).

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