Theses and dissertations — online
May. 18, 2007 by Valerie Gillispie
We are testing an online repository for the theses and dissertations of Wesleyan students. You can browse the uploaded theses here. Why are we putting these online?
-Students’ work will be available around the world 24/7, not only at Wesleyan. Currently, paper copies of honors theses are only available in Special Collections & Archives during reading room hours.
-It will allow Wesleyan’s great scholarship to be distributed more widely. We already know that Wesleyan students do amazing research in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and math. Let’s show the rest of the world, too!
-Students will easily be able to show their theses to future employers, graduate schools, etc. Online theses make it so easy to demonstrate the work done at Wesleyan.
As of now, it appears the project will go forward and become an additional way that theses and dissertations will be submitted. It’s an exciting time to be here!
That’s so cool!
Will you be adding older theses and dissertations as well?
We will be adding older ones as they are requested. We hope to start doing that in the next year!
Is the indexing system for the theses efficient?
The theses are full text indexed, so it should be fairly easy to find what you are looking for. We are also hoping to make things like “department” searchable.
will you be adding senior essays also?
At this time the library does not collect senior essays in hard copy. With this new way to share scholarship digitally, though, we could certainly consider adding senior essays to the online repository. Thank you for bringing this question to my attention! I will keep the Wesleyan community informed on what we decide.
I really enjoyed your post. I will have to come back again to read some more of them.