This guide is for students in Penn State Harrisburg's AMST 591: Seminar in American Studies. It includes numerous scholarly resources, search tips, and other tools needed to develop a thesis or dissertation project.
Citations and abstracts for doctoral dissertations and some theses from American and Canadian universities, and some international universities. Electronic full text of some works is available. If full text is not available, request a copy through interlibrary loan.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is the most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses in the world, with more than 2.5 million available in full text PDF.
A good tool if you have the title of a specific dissertation. Google Scholar will provide a link to the full text if the work is open access (freely available online).
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.
Links to repositories of open access theses and dissertations from around the world, organized by country.
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations Union Catalog will serve as a repository of rich graduate educational material contributed by a number of member institutions worldwide. The hope is that this project will increase the availability of student research for scholars, empower students to convey a richer message through the use of multimedia and hypermedia technologies and advance digital library technology worldwide.
A free database that includes more than 172,000 theses and dissertations from 1902 to the present and a link to full text when available. Previously called "American Doctoral Dissertations".
Ebsco Open Dissertations (previously “American Doctoral Dissertations”), is an open-access database built to assist researchers in locating both historic and contemporary dissertations and theses. Created with the generous support of the H.W. Wilson Foundation and the Congregational Library & Archives in Boston, it incorporates EBSCO’s previously released American Doctoral Dissertations, and features additional dissertation metadata contributed by select colleges and universities from around the world. Providing researchers with citations to graduate research across a span of time, from the early 20th century to the present, this database will continue to grow through regular updates and new partnerships with graduate degree-granting institutions.
Search the online catalog for dissertations from around the world by keyword, author, title or subject, and limit by country.
The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.
Electronic access to the full text of Penn State dissertations for Penn State users. Includes a small number of Penn State master’s theses. Enter Pennsylvania State University in the box for University/institution. Search by author, title, subject, or advisor’s name
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is the most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses in the world, with more than 2.5 million available in full text PDF.
Full text of doctoral dissertations and master’s theses from about 2009 to date. Browse by author or department, or search the full text by keywords. Some works are restricted to Penn State users for intellectual property reasons on request of the author.
Provides access to Penn State electronic theses and dissertations.
Locate doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and bachelor’s theses written at Penn State.
This is the online catalog of materials owned by Penn State Libraries. All formats (books, journals, audiovisuals, maps, recordings, etc.) are included. Circulation status for individual items is also provided. Coverage: Presently contains about 7 million records. Updates: Continuous up-to-the-minute as new records are added.
Select Thesis/Dissertation under Format
Most works published since 2009 have links to electronic full text
Older works are print and/or microfilm. Use I Want It to have a copy sent to your campus
To get a list of all masters theses and doctoral dissertations from a particular graduate program, use Advanced Search and select one or more programs from the drop-down menu under Graduate Program.