One of the most noteworthy acquisitions that the Library made in the past month is to upgrade its subscription to ProQuest’s Dissertations & Theses (PQDT). The Library’s previously subscribed to just the historical index with abstracts and full text to UC dissertations. Now, users on campus, or off-campus with UC Berkeley access privileges, have access to the full text of most dissertations added since 1997.
PQDT is the world’s most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1861 to the present day. More than 70,000 new full text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertations publishing partnerships with 700 leading academic institutions worldwide and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations through UMI’s Digital Archiving and Access Program. While a handful of UC schools are in the early stages of archiving their ETDs, or electronic theses and dissertations, in institutional repositories using tools like the eScholarship interface and the Merritt Preservation Repository. ProQuest’s database remains the digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress and the database of record for graduate research in North America.
For more extensive coverage of doctoral dissertations and theses from Western Europe, here are a few other resources to consult:
- Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze – Italy
- Center for Research Libraries – more than 800,000 doctoral dissertations from universities outside the U.S. and Canada
- DART: Europe E-theses Portal
- Dissertações e Teses Digitais (DiTeD) – Portugal
- The European Library
- OPAC SBN – Italy
- Portal de tesis digitales de REBIUN (Red de Bibliotecas Universitarias) – Spain
- TESEO – Spain
- theses.fr – France