Fully Digital Dissertation Projects

A Digital Dissertations event, “The Evolving Dissertation Landscape: A Conversation with Proquest,” will take place on Monday, December 1,...

Power also noticed a in publishing. Students were often forced to publish their own works in order to finish their . Dissertations could be published more cheaply as microfilm than as books. ProQuest still publishes so many dissertations that its collection (formerly called Digital Dissertations) has been declared the official U.S. off-site repository of the .

The GC Digital Fellows host a resource for students who are interested in creating a digital dissertation (and the committee members and academic departments who support them). The on the Digital Fellows website has sections for defining digital dissertations, , and of producing digital scholarship as part of the dissertation experience.
Visit the to read more about this resource.

Using Proquest Digital Dissertations Connect to ProQuest Digital Dissertations

Searching by subject: theses and dissertations do not receive standard "subject" headings. Dissertation titles are required to be descriptive, so title word searches are often effective. Another strategy, applicable for dissertations only, is to search in the Digital Dissertations database (limiting to UC Davis if desired), where one can search titles, abstracts and subject descriptors. Instructions for obtaining PDF Files from ProQuest: When displaying a citation for a dissertation, the Digital Dissertations database will indicate via a "Free Download" button that the dissertation is available for full text download. UC dissertations since 1997 are available in full-text format. Users accessing the database from a UC Davis computer will be able to issue a download request for UC full-text dissertations. You will receive a URL by e-mail, and may retrieve and view the requested text from any computer, including off campus. The database via includes Dissertation Abstracts International, with more than 1.5 million entries and the Masters Abstracts International. The Dissertation Abstracts International database includes citations for theses and dissertations from 1861 to the current year. Entries for dissertations from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts, written by the author. Citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. UC Davis submits only doctoral dissertations for inclusion in Digital Dissertations via Proquest. This ongoing project shows the intersections between my dissertation and innovative digital humanities tools and methodologies. Rather than submitting a completely digital dissertation project, this digital companion includes information that simply cannot be described by the traditional text-based dissertation format. While this companion will not be addressed during my dissertation defense, it will be open to methods of peer-review currently available and developing within the global Digital Humanities community.