Digital dissertations from ProQuest
Doris Small Helfer
Searcher; Jul/Aug 2003; 11, 7; ABI/INFORM Complete
pg. 46
Digital Dissertations from ProQuest
by Doris Small Helfer
Chai1; Technical Services
Library, California State University,
Northridge
ProQuest Information and Learning
(formerly University Microfilms Inc.)
has indexed and published dissertations since 1939. The Dissertation Ab stracts database, which now contains
more th an l. 7 million entries, is the
central and only authoritative source
for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The database includes citations for materials
ranging from the first U.S. dissertation,
accepted in 1861, to those accepted as
recently as last semester; those published from 1980 forward also include
abstracts, up to 350 words, written by
the author. Citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include 150word abstracts.
Of the 1.7 million titles indexed, ProQuest now offers over a million in full
text (in print or microform). For these
titles, th e database citation inclu des
the UMI order number. The database
represents the work of authors from
over 1,000 North American graduate
sch ools and European unive rsities.
ProQ uest adds some 60,000 new dissertations and 12,000 new theses to
the database each year.
In 1997, ProQuest introduced ProQuest Digital Dissertations, a service
that provides delivery of digitized, fulltext dissertations via the World Wide
Web. Subscribers receive online access
to the complete file of dissertations in
digital format starting with titles pub lished from 1997 fmward. Each institu-
tion that publishes with ProQuest Information and Learning receives free
campus-wide online access to the full
text (in PDF format) of dissertations and
theses submitted by that institution, regardless of the format submitted. Each
institution also receives free 24-page
previews of all dissertations and theses
submitted since 1997. In some cases,
the Pro Quest database may contain a
citation for which ProQuest cannot supply the actual dissertation due to the
policies of the university where the dissertation was done an d their agreements with ProQuest.
In 1998, the Library of Congress
named the ongoing UMI dissertation
collection the official U.S. offsite repository for dissertations and theses in
electronic format. This marks the first
time the Libraty of Congress has chosen
a third party to house one of its digital
collections. Beginning with disserta tions received in 2000, all titles receive
an ISBN (International Standard Book
Number). Titles will be listed in the UMI
Dissertation Abstracts database and
other well-known online and Webbased book distributors and databases.
In 2003, Pro Quest developed a Webbased application for the submission,
review, and approval of electronic theses and dissertations. The application,
available to graduate schools, is expected to improve and speed the dissertation publishing process for graduate students, faculty, and graduate
schools. Some 3,000 (or 5 percent) of
dissertations submitted for publication in 2002 came in electronic format, and that number is expected to
increase significantly in the n ext few
years. The new system allows a graduate student to upload his or h er ap proved dissertation into the ProQuest
publishing system, where it is autom atically reformatted into Adobe PDF
and sent directly to the graduate school.
There, the document is reviewed for
compliance with graduate school policy and format. Using an administrative tool, the graduate school reviewer
can accept the document or request
formatting revisions. The author is automatically notified by e-mail of the
actions taken. Once the thesis is accepted, the document and all relevant
data are delivered to UMI Dissertation
Publishing and to the university library for expedited processing, cataloging, a nd posting.
User Tips
The ProQu est Digital Disserta tion product is intuitive, fairly sim ple and straightforward to us e, and
offers many access points in addition to the obvious author, title, keywords, abstract, and subject headings.
For examp le, you can search by the
name of the institution granting the degree, name ofthe faculty adviser(s), degree, language, DVI (Dissertation Abstracts volume and issue) , ISBN, and
publication number. Once you h ave
done a search, the results are displayed
in descending order by degree date.You
can print, download, and e-mail search
results. It also has a shopping cart feature (thank you, Amazon.com, for the
@-sEARCHER: Th e Magazine for Database Professional s
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concept) to park requests until one is
ready to purchase.
You can choose either the Browse
or Search feature. In a browse search,
if the subject name is linked, you can
click to view the subjects within that
category. If the number of titles is
linked, you can click to compose a
search within that subject. This allows you to search only the dissertations within a discipline.
Don't forget to use alternative names.
For example, when I searched for UCLA,
the search resulted in 524 hits, including some where UCLA was mentioned
somewhere in the abstract. However, a
search for the full name of the institution- University of California, Los Angeles- yielded 22,509 records.
The addition of full-text document
delivery on command is a very welcome feature in this definitive dissertation database. One of the greatest
frustrations of students and scholars
alike about the dissertations abstracts
database was the inability to obtain
the dissertation itself without at least
a several-week delay. Student frustration with abstract -only databases has
increased greatly, especially with the
advent of e-journals and full-text databases. The lack of ability to obtain the
dissertation they wanted once they
had identified it sometimes led students to omit important dissertations
they should have used in their research. Often, students and faculty had
to request an interlibrary loan to get
the dissertation they wanted (unless it
happened to have been done at the
their university) and wait. Typically, researchers want entire dissertations.
The ability to instantly download them
will greatly assist researchers in obtaining what they need.
One of the nicest features is the free
24-page preview of dissertations and
theses submitted from 1997 forward.
This is a great way to get a feel for
whether or not a particular dissertation
will really help a researcher or not.
Since finding a unique and original
topic is critical to those working on
their own theses and dissertations,
~
Online Uissc l·tallon Sc1·vic cs
Visit the home page of Disserta- ..,.
tion Abstracts [wwwlib.umi.com/
dissertations/gateway] to check
out the most current 2 years of
citations and dissertations.
ProQu o c: t
Olgll:~l
Go to www.proquest.com/
hp/Products/Dissertations.
html if you are interested
in traditional dissertations.
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Discipline Counts
In the Humanities and Social Sciences areas, the Dissertation database boast the
following number of titles in the following fields as of May 4, 2003:
Communications and the Arts
Architecture (0729)
Art History (0377)
Cinema (0900)
Dance (0378)
Design and Decorative Arts (0389)
Fine Arts (0357)
Information Science (0723)
Journalism (0391)
Landscape Architecture (0390)
library Science (0399)
Mass Commun ications (0708)
Music (0413)
Speech Communication (0459)
Th eater (0465)
Education
Language, Literature, and Linguistics
Philosophy, Rel igion, and Theology
Socia l Sciences
94,320
4,382
5,236
3,394
886
585
11,403
5,453
3,989
436
6,059
10,386
21,553
11,356
9,202
435,674
120,894
83,813
497,692
In the Sciences and Engineering subject, the Dissertation database boasts t he
fol lowing number of titles in the following fields as of May 4 , 2003:
Biological Sc iences
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Health Sc iences
Physical Sc iences
Psychology
373,351
70,268
165,221
674,852
223,739
July/August 2003
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~
these previews are vital for students
trying to verify that the dissertation
topic they have in mind has not already
been done by someone else. It also
helps determine if they will need the
outside dissertation in their research.
Of course downloading does not
come free, but it is significantly discounted from the bound and even unbound purchase price. Downloading a
dissertation from the Web costs $25.50
while an unbound paper copy sent via
priority mail costs $34 - excluding
taxes- and takes 4-5 working days. A
softcover paper copy would cost $43;
a hardcover paper copy costs $53 and
takes 3 weeks. ProQuest even offers a
35mm roll microfilm option for titles
published after 1976, which costs $39
and also takes up to 3 weeks to get.
One very important note about the
dissertation database: Certain universities retain their rights to publish and
provide their own dissertations, so you
cannot order everything found in this
database through Pro Quest. When you
find such a citation in the database, it
does direct you to where you can obtain the dissertation from the appropriate university.
If you want a known item, try the
ordering interface for Dissertation Express, which allows searching only by
author, title, or publication number.
Dissertation Express [http:/ /wwwlib.
umi.com/dxweb/1 is used entirely for
known item searching and ordering.
Visitors can freely access the most
current 2 years of citations and abstracts in the Dissertation Abstracts
database. To check out the most cur-
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-----·
rent 2 years, start from the home page:
http:/ /wwwlib.umi.com/disserta
tions/ gateway
A Winner
Overall every university or research
institution needs this information and,
in this database, they receive it with an
intuitive and easy-to-use search interface. The advantage of the immediate
digital download is a great enhancement to this database and should significantly help students and researchers
obtain needed dissertations much
more quickly. Libraries will still have
to bind downloaded dissertations in
order to keep them in their collections, but for material that is urgently
required, this will greatly assist researchers in acquiring it.
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