ProQuest Digital Dissertations

Trouble with Access?    See our Remote Access guide

This database provides information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses from a large number of  universities from around the world, back for more than a hundred years.  Most of the dissertations listed in the database from 1997 onward now are available for free to members of the Western University academic community.

The database is the internet version of Dissertations Abstracts International

Additional details and search tips are provided below.  To go directly to ProQuest Digital Dissertations click here.

1. Scope and Coverage

The oldest dissertation in the database was published in 1743 at Universitaet Halle (Germany).  At present, records for dissertations produced at more than a thousand universities worldwide are being regularly added to the database.  Records for documents produced at a particular university may begin in the database at any time.  For instance, the earliest UWO doctoral dissertation listed in the database was published in 1949 and the earliest UWO master's thesis was published in 1994.  Records for recent publications are added to the database as they are made  available from each university to ProQuest.

Abstracts are available for doctoral dissertations published from 1980 onward and for master's theses from 1988 onward and they are fully searchable. Other searchable  fields,  like thesis adviser name (1987) and ISBN (2000), have been added  to  records for documents published after the dates indicated.

Note: UK/Ireland Disserations & Theses are bibliographic records only. This includes:

A comprehensive bibliographic listing of dissertations and theses, most with abstracts, accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Date range: 1716 to current

2. What you can get

Members of the university community  who connect to the database through the UWO campus network ,or through an external server via Western Libraries proxy server, can search the database and retrieve the full-text of the document  for free.  If you need assistance with the proxy server click here.

3. Searching tips

A.) Searching by school:
Generally use the formal name of the university; schools within a university are normally not identified.  All Western University dissertations are attributed to Western University, not to Ivey or the Business School, so for Western University documents use the search term "Western Ontario" in the school field.

The "Current Research @" service also offers a convenient way to focus research on a particular university.
Click on "Connect to Current Research @" near the bottom of the basic search screen.  Choose either " browse by name"  or "location options"  and select a university from the displayed list.  Follow the search instructions to limit your search to documents published at that university.

B.) Searching by person:
Of course you can find dissertations by author name, but as well, for documents published  from about 1987 onward you can also search by the name of the thesis adviser.  Use the "adviser field".

C.) Searching by subject:
Only very general subject headings have been added to the citation records.  For instance, there are only five headings  for "Business Administration":  "General" , "Accounting",  "Banking" , "Management"  and "Marketing" .  (To see the full list of subject headings, click on the BROWSE button in the upper left corner of the basic search screen; a display titled "Browse by Subject" lists all the heading used in the database).  To search by a topic like "leveraged buyouts" use that term in a keyword search.   The keyword search will find your search term anywhere in records including the abstract field (when available).  Remember that keyword searching is less effective for records without abstracts (published prior to the 1980s);  effectively, keyword searching on early records only involves the title field.

Additional information about the product is available at the site. Enjoy your searching - we can assure you that it is much easier to find  information in the digital version than it was in the multi-volumed printed edition which is housed in the D.B.Weldon Library and in the storage facility (RDL).