University of Melbourne Library Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library

 

 

 

Finding Theses / Dissertations

Faculty of Music Theses | Music Theses Indexes | General Theses Indexes | Printed Lists of Music Theses

Before starting a research project, it is essential to check to what extent your proposed topic has already been researched or if it is currently under investigation by another researcher in your field. The following indexes of theses and dissertations will help you identify the extent of this research.

If you have a question about locating the information you need, contact us for expert assistance.

Music Theses Indexes

Archive of Dissertation Abstracts in Music A very selective list of theses, with abstracts, maintained by J. P. E. Harper-Scott (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London). Lists international dissertations both completed and in progress. Includes abstracts and links to other theses lists.
Australia & New zealand Postgraduate Music Research Register From the Musicological Society of Australia. This Register spans the period 1917 to 2008. "Our primary on-going aim is to catalogue all music-related research projects in Australia and New Zealand and to make this information available to all interested parties in a format that is useful to them... We strongly encourage all current postgraduates to register their project with us."
DDM-Online Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology Online Includes references to over 14,000 completed and in-progress dissertations from about 1950 onwards. There are no abstracts and does not include the dissertations themselves. The database is fully searchable by author and or by as many as three simultaneous keywords in any part of the record. DDM-Online is also browsable by general, historical period.
Music Index Online 1974- (restricted - Univesity of Melbourne only) Earlier issues available in print as Music Index, 1949- UniM Music REF 016.78 MUSI
Choose the "Expert Search" option and limit document type to "Dissertation". Guide
Music Theory Online : Dissertation Index Arranged by author, includes abstracts and tables of contents for international music theory theses from 1992 onwards, with some earlier entries.
Music Therapy World - Fulltext Dissertations Database Includes a keyword search function as well as browsable lists by country, title, author, year and thesis type.
RILM Online 1967- (restricted - Univesity of Melbourne only) Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale is an index to music books, journal articles, dissertations, essays, reviews, Festschriften, iconographies, etc. Includes an abstract (in English) and links to fulltext where available. Guide
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General Theses Indexes & Catalogues

Australasian Digital Theses Program A distributed database of digital versions of theses produced by the postgraduate research students at Australian universities.
Australian Research Online Search more than 314,000 Australian research outputs across the contents of Australian university and government research repositories including the Australasian Digital Theses Program.
Dissertations Search Catalog of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a consortium of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries.
COPAC A union catalogue which provides access to the merged online catalogues of major University and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library.
DART-Europe E-theses Portal (DEEP) European Working Group of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Access to 106,000 doctoral theses providing researchers with a single European Portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).
Digital Library and Archives Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Virginia Tech. Allows searching for citations and abstracts of over 6,700 theses and dissertations. Free full-text access is provided for over 4,500 of these items.
Dissertations & Theses Fulltext(ProQuest) (restricted - Univesity of Melbourne only) An index to more than 2 million theses, mostly from U.S. institutions since 1861. Also a selection from Canadian, British, and European institutions, together with a few from Australia and New Zealand. More than 930,000 are available in fulltext, and an average of 2,000 new titles are added to the database each week. Search by keywords, author, title, school, degree, language etc, or browse by subject.
Dissertations on Google Google and Google Scholar are indexing dissertations and theses published in 2007 and 2008. However, Canadian graduate works are not included, nor are any that are embargoed or restricted at an author's request.
DMS : Dissertationsmeldestelle der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Covers Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Recherche par divers critères accessible dans la rubrique Benutzerabfrage. Contenu : Répertoire des thèses en cours (Allemagne, Autriche, Suisse) "élaboré par la Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (Kassel) et hébergé par l'Université de Münster."
eScholarship Repository Site - California Digital Library "The eScholarship Repository allows scholars in the University of California system to submit their work to a central location where any users may easily access it free of charge."
ETD's Digitial Library Electronic Theses and Dissertations, from Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Includes links to a number of electronic theses projects, at mainly US universities, with access to the abstracts.
EThOS - Beta British Library - Electronic Theses Online Service, opening access to UK theses. This is running in beta at the moment
Index to Theses, 1716- (restricted - University of Melbourne only) A comprehensive listing of approximately 474,184 theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland.
Free access version at : http://www.theses.com/
Libraries Australia Australian National Bibliographic Database of more than 40 million items held in over 800 Australian libraries. Search for books, journals, newspapers, theses, pictures, music, manuscripts, maps and more. Online resources such as digitised images and full text publications can also be accessed.
DSpace at MIT MIT's online institutional repository contains MIT Research in digital form, including preprints, technical reports, working papers, theses, conference papers, images, and more.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) Limit by using "Refine this search" option and adding additional keywords, etc. Additional limit categories in L.H. menu. Sort by relevance, date, etc.
OAIster OAIster digital services, University of Michigan, is a digital library resource project of over 400 institutions worldwide. The collection inlcudes theses. There is some overlap with Dissertations & Theses (ProQuest).
PhdData Universal Index of Doctoral Dissertations in Progress. The site also allows users to communicate with those who have their theses registered on the site.
SUDOC (Système universitaire de documentation) - France. This union catalog contains 5 million titles of monographs, dissertations, periodicals, and other kinds of documents, including their locations. The Sudoc catalog lets you search bibliographic information on all types of documents held by French academic libraries, as well as other higher educational establishments, including theses from 1972 to the present.
Choose Search the Catalogue, then the Extended Search option, then type in your search and check the Dissertations box in the 'type of publication' list.
Theses Canada Portal Index with selected full-text. Search Canada's national online catalogue, for bibliographic records of all theses and also selected access to the full text electronic versions of numerous Canadian theses and dissertations.
Université Lumière Lyon 2 : Les Thèses Électroniques Cyperthèses - France. "L'université Lyon 2 est la première université française et l'une des premières au monde qui archive et diffuse en format numérique les thèses soutenues. Cette politique qui est mise en oeuvre de manière systématique depuis 2000, permet l'archivage et la diffusion sur internet plus de 1210 thèses, soit la quasi totalité des thèses soutenues depuis cette date."
Library Catalogue - Univesity of Melbourne The University Library holds a copy of each University of Melbourne higher degree thesis (Masters and PhD). These are not for loan but are available for consultation in the Cultural Collections Reading Room, Baillieu Library, 3rd floor.

Search the catalogue by author OR by keywords to identify theses on a particular topic. Type in keywords that identify the institution, the kind of publication you are looking for, and the topic of interest. Combine words and phrases with connecting words AND, OR, NOT: eg KEYWORD=university AND melbourne AND thesis AND music

UMER : University of Melbourne Eprint Repository The University of Melbourne ePrints Repository is an institutional server designed to load and provide free access to the research output of University of Melbourne, including theses. This material may be read online.
University of Melbourne Research Reports Web access to these publications provides a comprehensive listing of University research projects including details of research staff and of theses passed and in progress of each university department or faculty.
Vidyanidhi, E-scholarship portal and Digital library A digital archive of Indian Doctoral Theses.
WorldCat - Advanced Search A catalogue of books and other materials, including theses, in libraries worldwide, but especailly at U.S. academic institutions. Limit "Content" to Thesis/Dissertation. Set "Format" to Internet Resource, to limit to fulltext where available.
Worldwide ETD Search A global index of freely available electronic theses and dissertations, provided by major ETD collections around the world. This index lets you search for information about each ETD, including authors, titles, and abstracts.
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Printed Lists of Music Theses

Publications listing theses, though not as up-to-date as online listings, can be found using library catalogues. Also many research bibliographies list theses. Some examples are:

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