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Theses

UCL Library Services, Gower St., London WC1E 6BT


 020 7679 7700
E-mail: library@ucl.ac.uk
Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/

UCL Libraries do not normally hold copies of theses in the following categories as they are
usually kept in departments:

* Undergraduate dissertations
* Diploma theses
* MA, MSc, MRes, LLM theses
* Theses from other universities or colleges

However, there are exceptions:-

 UCL Language & Speech Science Library keeps final year MSc and BSc
dissertations (or “projects”) by Language Sciences (formerly Human
Communication Science and Phonetics & Linguistics) students. The last 5 years’
worth are on site, the rest are in our Wickford Store. However, from 2008 onwards
BSc Speech Science dissertations are only accessible online by UCL members via
the Psychology & Language Sciences web pages. For more information, see:-
www.ucl.ac.uk/library/hccollections.shtml#dissert

 The Institute of Archaeology keeps a very limited number of undergraduate and


Masters theses behind the Issue Desk purely as examples of "good practice" for the
benefit of students.

 The Bartlett Library holds the dissertations of most of the courses run by the Bartlett
School of Graduate Studies, as well as those of some MSc Planning courses. The
last 5 years are in the Library itself, with older dissertations held in our Wickford
Store.

 Doctorate theses in Clinical Psychology are also held but there are restrictions on
access:-
Volume 1: Available for reference only in the UCL Library only to UCL staff,
students and alumni; no photocopying of any part.
Volume 2: Available for reference only to UCL staff, students or alumni in
possession of a letter from the Head of the Research Department of Clinical,
Educational and Health Psychology (Professor Peter Fonagy) authorising
permission for a specified volume only; no photocopying.

 Some Masters level theses for the following subjects are also kept in our Wickford
Store:-
Conservation Studies, Museum Studies and Geography.
University of London theses

To date the University of London Library at Senate House has held print copies of all
research degree theses awarded by the University of London; this includes those
completed at UCL before it began awarding its own degrees in 2007. See the following
web page for further information:

www.shl.london.ac.uk/resources/theses.shtml

However, as with other UK theses these are now being digitized by the British Library
EThOS service which aims to create a single repository for all UK research theses:-

http://ethos.bl.uk

UCL theses

From session 2008/2009 UCL students entering for the award of PhD, MPhil or MD(Res)
degrees have been required to submit one printed and one electronic copy of their theses
and encouraged to deposit the electronic copy in UCL’s open access repository, UCL
Eprints. More information on this is available at:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/e-theses

So some digital dissertations are now available alongside other UCL research publications
in the Eprints Repository although you have to tick a box to select them:-

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/cgi/search/advanced

Printed copies of most UCL PhD and MPhil theses are listed in our Library Catalogue and
can be requested from Store:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/library/storevis.shtml#theses

However, theses in the following subject areas are kept by the relevant University of
London postgraduate research institute instead. See www.sas.ac.uk for details.

* Classical Studies theses are held by the Institute of Classical Studies


* Germanic Studies theses are held by the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
* History theses are held by the Institute of Historical Research
* Latin-American Studies theses are held by the Institute for the Study of the
Americas
* Law theses are held by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Finding theses in the Catalogue

If you know the author and/or the title of a particular thesis you can look for it in the
Catalogue.

 Access the Catalogue online at library.ucl.ac.uk or via one of the dedicated Catalogue
terminals in our libraries
 Enter the author’s name and/or key words from the title in the “Quick Search” box and
click on “Search”

You will normally see that the location or classmark is “UCL THESES STORE” and you
can make requests as outlined below.

If you don’t have a specific thesis in mind but you would like to see what theses the Library
has on a particular subject you can choose “Advanced Search” then

Set 1st “Field to search” to “Keywords anywhere” by clicking in the drop-down box and
entering keyword(s) in search box

Set 2nd “Field to search” to “Classmark” and type “theses”

If the thesis was submitted before 1982 you will need to look at the digitised card
catalogue at http://cardcat.ucl.ac.uk or ask for help at an Enquiry Desk.

Requesting Theses

Most of our theses are kept in our Store in Wickford, Essex and can be requested for
consultation in several of our libraries either by clicking on the “Request” option on the left-
hand side of the catalogue record or by filling in the online “Store request” form at the top
of the Catalogue or from the Stores web page:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/storeform.shtml

There may be some delay before more recent theses are added to the Catalogue so if you
are certain that the thesis you want to see was definitely completed at UCL, that it doesn’t
fall into the categories covered by the postgraduate institutes as mentioned above, and
that the degree was awarded, just fill in a “Store request” form anyway.

Index to Theses

This database contains a comprehensive list of theses accepted for higher degrees by
universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716.

You will find the database under “I” in the A-Z list at:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/database/index.shtml

From the Main Search Page, Index to Theses offers several levels of search facility. By
default it offers Quick Search which works well enough for simple keywords or an
uncommon author name.

Any terms that you enter in the search box will be linked by AND (unless you change the
connector to OR), e.g. english rose will look for each separate word appearing either as
an author or a title word or a word in the abstract; thus it would find:
Rose, J.K.H. The English grammar schools in the XVIII century.
Alternatively there are other more sophisticated kinds of search. Both Simple Search and
Standard Search allow you to specify which field of the record you want to search for a
term, e.g.
* Rose as an Author
* 1980 as the Year of completion
* Manchester included in the name of the University or College awarding the degree.

In each type of search, the truncation symbol is an asterisk * , e.g. architectur* finds
architectural, architecture, or architectures

Obtaining Theses

If you have identified any theses from other UK colleges or universities that you would like
to see you can apply for them via our Interlending & Document Supply Service. See the
following web pages for further information on how to do this:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/ids.shtml#ilthesis

Alternatively you can investigate whether the thesis is available electronically as in the
EthOS service above or via:-

 DART-Europe which is a portal that allows browsing and searching of nearly


100,000 research theses:-

www.dart-europe.eu

Dissertations and Theses


This database lists PhD and some Masters theses completed at universities in the United
States 1861 onwards. From 1976 some European theses have been included, and from
1989 coverage was extended worldwide; but this remains selective for most countries.
You will find the database under “D” in the A-Z list at:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/database/index.shtml

Many of the theses have 24 page previews in PDF format and you can order copies for
yourself or your research group direct from UMI.
Alternatively, you could apply for an Inter-Library Loan as referred to above, but this can
take a long time and there is no guarantee that colleges and universities abroad will lend
their theses.

Thesis binders

MPhils and PhDs will need to be professionally bound so see the Information for Current
Students web pages for more on this:-

www.ucl.ac.uk/current-students/exams_and_awards/GI/thesis-binding

July 2009

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