Tag Archives: theses

New digital access to Divinity theses collection

Posted on by
Reply

New College Theses

I’m delighted to announced that nearly two hundred and fifty theses dating from 1921-1950 from the New College Library collection are now available online in the Edinburgh Research Archive, part of the Divinity Dissertation and Thesis Collection. While later theses are held in 2 copies, one at the Main Library, we believe that New College Library holds the only copy of theses from this early period.  The New College Theses collection was catalogued online in 2012 as part of the Funk Projects.

The digitisation project was managed by Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator in Library & University Collections, who explains : “We worked with the digitisation company Restore to digitise 250 unique theses from New College – these are now available open-access for anyone to download at: https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/133“
The theses are fully searchable on the ERA platform but also discoverable via Google, making New College scholarship accessible to a much wider audience.
The collection includes a wide variety of research topics, such as Comparison of Chinese and Hebrew wisdom, as exemplified in the Book of Proverbs … [1933] by Elizabeth G.K. Hewat, or The Christian Inscriptions of North Africa … [1943] by Ian Thomson Gillan. Do you recognise any of the authors? We’d love to know more about what happened next to these Divinity alumni.
  • Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator
  • Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Unique New College theses going digital

Posted on by
Reply

New College ThesesOver two hundred theses from the New College Library collection will soon be available online. We’ve been successful in a small project bid to digitise 200 theses dating 1921-1950.  While later theses are held in 2 copies, one at the Main Library, we believe that New College Library holds the only copy of theses from this early period. Digitised theses will be uploaded to ERA, and the project is scheduled to be complete by January 2015. The New College Theses collection was catalogued online in 2012 as part of the Funk Projects. Please note that from now until January 2015, these theses will be unavailable to users whilst they are being scanned.

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian, Divinity

Top Tips for Finding Theses #ILW2004

Posted on by
Reply

New College ThesesNeed to find out what research has already been conducted in your topic area? Some PhD research ends up being published but not all, so doing a specific search for theses may be the only way that you will come across it. This Innovative Learning Week seminar will cover search techniques for theses in online and print form.

 

Today, 15:00-16:00, New College – Room 1.07.

Can’t attend today’s session? Book on the IS Skills Finding Theses seminar, or explore the Theses Subject Guide online.

 

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Full Text now available at University of Edinburgh

Posted on by
Reply

ProQuest Dissertations and ThesesProquest’s Dissertations & Theses database is now available for University of Edinburgh users.

We have been subscribing to Proquest’s Dissertations & Theses – Abstracts & Indexes for some time but have been able to upgrade our  access to the full subscription which offers full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. To access, look under P for ‘ProQuest Dissertations & Theses’ in the A-Z list of databases http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-a-z

Thank you for all your feedback which was key to putting together a case for purchasing this  expensive resource.

For information about more resources and services for theses, see the Theses Subject Guide.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is on trial now

Posted on by
1

ProQuest Dissertations and ThesesProquest’s Dissertations & Theses database is now available on trial for University of Edinburgh users until on March 9, 2013.

We have been subscribing to Proquest’s Dissertations & Theses – Abstracts & Indexes for some time now. This new trial gives access to the full subscription which offers full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997.

To access, look under D for ‘Dissertations & Theses’ in the A-Z list of databases http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-a-z

Your feedback is gratefully received and is key to putting together a case for purchasing this very expensive resource.

Top ten tips for finding theses

Posted on by
Reply

Postgraduate students often ask me about how to find theses. Unfortunately there’s no single source for information on all theses worldwide.

However here are a few tips that might help …
1. All Divinity theses and post 1984 other University of Edinburgh theses are now catalogued onto the online catalogue. See my earlier blog post for tips on searching for New College theses …

2. Older University of Edinburgh theses are listed in sheaf-binder indexes, which are held in the CRC Research Suite – see the useful CRC Guide to Theses

3. Remember that most University of Edinburgh printed theses are kept as archival copies and can only be read in the Library.

4. The Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) has full text online versions of all Edinburgh University theses submitted from 2005.

5. Go to the Theses subject guide on the University of Edinburgh Library website to find a gateway to information sources from universities worldwide  – such as …

6. [University of Edinburgh restricted] … The Index to Theses database finds details of UK & Ireland theses from 1715- present (no full text)

7. [University of Edinburgh restricted] The Dissertations and Theses database from ProQuest finds details of primarily US & Canada theses. Currently the University of Edinburgh has not subscribed to the full text option, but if you want the full text you could apply for an inter-library loan.

8. New to me is the Networked Library of Theses and Digital Dissertations – SCIRUS Search. This freely available search of public domain theses will include subscribed content from University of Edinburgh subscriptions if you’re on a University network machine, or going through MyEd or VPN at home (No need to alter settings as you would for Google scholar). There’s more full text here than I’d expected.

9. The DART Europe E-Theses portal  – at the time of writing, this is offering access to 362030 open access research theses from 523 Universities in 27 European countries.

10. For theses from further afield, you could try the Center for Research Libraries Global Resources Network.

Finding New College theses on the online catalogue

Posted on by
1

In response to your questions, here’s some tips for finding New College theses on the University of Edinburgh Library catalogue.

Personally, I find using the Aquabrowser version of the catalogue quite useful for a quick (if dirty) search of what’s available. Type in theses + another search term – e.g. christianity, New Testament etc – into the search box. I searched for eschatology theses. Once you’ve got your list of results make sure that you select ‘New College Library’ from the list of library locations and you should get New College Library results only. One health warning here : you will also get books with the word ‘theses’ in the title and you may get theses from other universities if we have them in the library.

For more precision, you can use the ‘classic’ library catalogue interface. Go straight to the advanced search. Type theses into the search box . Add any additional keywords into the remaining search boxes. Make sure you choose a year of publication option – click one of the radio buttons. For instance you can click the first radio button and choose to search the last 50 years. Now go down to the Library location box and choose New College Library only. 

 Another tip – when you click the search button at the bottom of the form, choose the search button next to where it says ’10 records per page’. Don’t click the word ‘Search’ which is on the tab at the bottom of the page next to Saved Searches. If you do – as I’ve found to my frustration – it thinks you want to start a new search and you end up having to start over again.