[SIGCIS-Members] Dissertations

[James Sumner]

A belated follow-up to Jim's message about access to Masters and PhD 
dissertations:

The British Library's Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) is 
shaping up to be very effective both as a clearing-house for information 
about dissertations available digitally, and as a direct-access 
repository. I'm surprised it's not better publicised. See:

<http://ethos.bl.uk>

The database attempts to list every research thesis/dissertation 
completed at a higher education institution in the UK. If a copy has 
been deposited with the British Library (which is usually the case) and 
has no access restrictions, it can be scanned and prepared for 
electronic download.

The beauty of this provision is that, once any user has ordered a thesis 
to be digitised, it becomes available to later users at *no charge*. 
(Users requesting theses have to register, but there are no restrictions 
on registration. Users outside the UK are welcome.)

A quick search on obvious keywords showed the following as currently 
available for direct free download:

---
The growth of the Indian software industry : a social history
Author:  Warrier, Meera.
Awarding Institution:  University of East Anglia
Awarded:  2003

The roots and early history of the British home computer market : 
origins of the masculine micro.
Author:  Haddon, Leslie G.
Awarding Institution:  Imperial College London (University of London)
Awarded:  1988

Technology, consumption and the future : the experience of home computing.
Author:  Skinner, David Ian.
Awarding Institution:  Brunel University
Awarded:  1992

A history of the theory of recursive functions and computability with 
special reference to the developments initiated by Godels incompleteness 
theorems.
Author:  Adams, R.G.
Awarding Institution:  Hatfield Polytechnic
Awarded:  1983

Learning languages with computers : a history of computer assisted 
language learning from 1960 to 1990 in relation to education, 
linguistics and applied linguistics.
Author:  Fox, Jeremy.
Awarding Institution:  University of East Anglia
Awarded:  1991

The impact of e-Government in the UK
Author:  Organ, Joseph John
Awarding Institution:  University of Leeds
Awarded:  2006
---

Theses which have not been digitised usually attract a one-off fee of 
£40 for digitisation. Depending on the awarding institution's access 
policy, however, digitisation is sometimes free (though there may be a 
wait of up to 30 days before access is available).

The system will also try to link to full-text versions held in local 
repositories such as <etheses.whiterose.ac.uk> where it can.

Hope you find this useful!
Best
James

On 12/06/2010 17:01, James Cortada wrote:
> Thanks to those of you who were able to respond to this request for
> information. Some of my favorite sigcis e-mail is of this sort as I then
> go and look at many of the citations mentioned.
>
> I particularly like it when colleagues mention their Masters and Ph.D.
> dissertations and provide a link to where we can obtain a copy. This is
> of extraordinary importance because it is incredibly easy not to be
> aware of important research. Therefore, I would like to suggest that if
> you have not shared with everyone your dissertations, that you do so
> electronically, if you can. I for one have kept a copy of each
> dissertation that has been made available through this sigcis so that
> there is at least one copy that gets preserved outside of the normal
> places, and for European and Asian dissertations, a copy in the USA. I
> hope others do the same, particularly at such institutions as CBI and
> universities.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada
> IBM Institute for Business Value
> 2917 Irvington Way
> Madison, WI 53713 USA
> jwcorta at us.ibm.com
> 608-270-4462
>
>
>
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