Much of the research that is published in scientific journals is written by doctoral students who are working on their dissertations. The dissertation itself can be a good source of information for a specific research field. Partly because dissertations often give the state-of-the-art of the research field and partly because they contain extensive reference lists for earlier and related work.
The question is: where can you find references for dissertations?
If you are looking for dissertations from BTH you can either search the Library catalogue or from the Library web page under the headline Electronic publishing – Electronic research archive. Here you will find all doctoral and licentiate dissertations produced at BTH since 2001. In most cases they are available in full text, but in case they are not, you can borrow them at the Library.
If you want to search for dissertations from other Swedish libraries, the database LIBRIS is a good place to search. In Libris you can limit your search to dissertations. Choose the extended search form and under the headline publication type choose dissertations.
In Libris you will mostly find Swedish dissertations, but there are also some references for dissertations from other countries. There are some links to the full text of the dissertations in Libris, but this is not yet common. Another way to find the full text of the dissertation (if it exists) is to pay a visit to the web site of the university or university college where the dissertation was published. Click the following link for a list of addresses.
http://www.luth.se/depts/lib/books/avhandlingar.shtml On that web page there are also links to other countries’ dissertation databases.
In the American ”Digital dissertations” there are dissertations in digital format. You have to pay for the dissertation itself, but you can see the first 24 pages of the dissertation in PDF.
Kent Pettersson
2006-02-06
