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Inter-Library Loans: Sourcing a Thesis

Borrowing items from other libraries

Recommended online sources that provide full-text or list of theses

Dissertations and Theses A&I
A comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses, with more than 2.3 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses included, covering graduate research from 1861 to present. You can also search within Dissertations and Theses A & I to find abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

 

ETHoS (Electronic Theses Online Service) from the British Library (full text)
Where a thesis has been digitised previously by the British Library, it may be available to download
for free. In other cases, you may have to request that the British Library digitise the thesis. There
will be a cost and a wait involved.
Where a PDF is available: Login>Click download>Select download>Add to basket>Confirm>Agree to
terms and conditions>Download

 

DART Europe E-Theses Portal (full text)
Theses from repositories around Europe.

 

TEL (Théses-en-ligne)
Tel is an initiative of Le CCSD (Centre pour La Communication Scientifique Directe). It aims to provide free access to online versions of Doctoral PHD theses submitted at French Universities and Colleges. All subject Areas of the sciences, social sciences and humanities are covered.

 

National ETD Portal (South African Theses and Dissertations)
This site is run by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) in collaboration with Committee of the Higher Education Librarians of South Africa (CHELSA). Metadata for all theses and dissertations produced in South Africa are collected and made accessible, as well as disseminated further, for the site.

 

WorldCat
Search for thesis only: go to Advanced Search and change content to "Thesis/Dissertations"

 

Google Scholar (citations, abstracts and full text)
Open access repositories are accessible through Google Scholar so you can find theses here. You will have to sort through a lot more results as you cannot limit to "theses". To distinguish theses from other material, on the result record, where you normally see publication details you will see the name of an Institute or an open access repository.

 

Institutional Repositories in general
When you know the Institute that awarded the Degree, you could check to see if the institution has an Institutional Repository and then search that for the thesis.

Additional Assistance?

If you can't locate a full-text thesis using the sources above, please contact interlibraryloans@ul.ie for additional assistance along with the details of the required thesis.