The Elusive Dissertation
There is no single source for a comprehensive dissertation search. WorldCat and ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses Full Text include most American dissertations. Dissertations @ The Center for Research Libraries lends non-American dissertations to member borrowers. Library catalogs and specialized repositories contain other titles. Request any dissertation through Interlibrary Loan. Though not every title is available through ILL, it is worth a try.
Dissertations at the Graduate Center
Graduate Center dissertations from 1988 to the present are available for browsing in the Dissertation Reading Room on the first floor of the library. If you do not know the year of a dissertation, check the author or title in the CUNY Catalog or in Digital Dissertations.
For more information about submitting your own thesis or dissertation, see the Dissertations & Theses guide.
Dissertation Databases & Repositories
For more information on depositing dissertations and theses, see the Dissertations & Theses guide.
- CUNY Dissertations in Academic Works, 2014-presentAs of 2014, all Graduate Center dissertations and master's theses appear in the Graduate Center's institutional repository, Academic Works. Many dissertations/theses are open access in Academic Works, but some are embargoed and will not become available until a future date. Pre-2014 dissertations currently are in the process of being added to Academic Works. Unless requested otherwise by the author, these pre-2014 works are accessible only to the CUNY community.
- Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
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Indexes two-million dissertations from over one-thousand institutions, with citations from 1861-1980 and abstracts from 1980 to present. Includes the full text of most post-1996 CUNY dissertations and many post-1996 dissertations from other institutions, as well as thousands of earlier ones. To limit your search to CUNY dissertations, include 0046 in your search statement, selecting the school name/code search field. Non-U.S.dissertations can be searched in the Center for Research Libraries' catalog. - Dissertations & Theses @ City University of New York Graduate Center This link opens in a new window
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CUNY dissertations dating back to 1965. Full text available except for embargoed works.
- Networked Digital LIbrary of Theses and DissertationsNDLTD finds additional electronic works produced outside North America.
- Open Access Theses and DissertationsMetadata from over 600 institutions, indexes over 1.5 million theses and dissertations.
- Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Online Catalog This link opens in a new window
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The Center for Research Libraries provides a shared collection of five million books, journals, documents and newspapers to supplement member libraries’ holdings in the humanities, science, and social sciences. With a strategic emphasis on expanding electronic access to international primary source collections, CRL participates in a number of cooperative digitization efforts, yielding millions of pages of digitized content to date.
CRL resources include: