Dissertation Databases on the Web

Abstract

Tracking down a dissertation with the aid of one of the many modern Web-based databases is far easier then it was just ten years ago. One can now use keywords to scour a commercial search engine or a pay site to locate dissertation titles, abstracts, and even full text documentation regardless of publication year or location. With all of this information readily available on the Web, one could be tempted into thinking that a comprehensive, electronic index for dissertations must be available, but unfortunately, one-stop shopping for dissertations does not exist. Even the more comprehensive sites, like Dissertation Abstracts Online, will locate dissertations from as far back as the mid-19th century, but with a bias towards dissertations from North American universities. Music scholars must still use European sources like Index to Theses in Great Britain and Ireland (http://www.theses.com/) or Dissertationsmeldestelle der Gesellschaft fur Musikforschung (http://musikwiss.uni-muenster.de/) to create an improved global picture of scholarship. For those who do not have access to pay sites, locating a dissertation is even more challenging, but not impossible. In this review, three free sites, Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online, Archive of Dissertation Abstracts in Music, and the Dissertation Index from Music Theory Online will be evaluated for comprehensiveness and ease of use. Dissertation Abstracts Online will be analyzed first in order to create a standard for comparison purposes. Dissertation Abstracts Online. ProQuest Information and Learning. Available through various database providers. For information, see http://www.il.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/diss_abstract_online.shtml. [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Pricing varies] With over two million completed dissertations going as far back as 1861 and abstracts from as far back as 1980, Dissertation Abstracts Online (DAO) towers over most other dissertation databases. Navigation through this database is effortless due to the robust limiting and searching commands available when accessed through OCLC's FirstSearch (http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/). One can limit and sort by numerous access points such as year, institution, and subject area, or create a general keyword search, which is applied to all citations and abstracts in the database. This makes it quite simple to discover that 27,978 dissertations have been indexed in this database, the earliest from 1895. It also makes it quite simple to crosscheck the amount of dissertations for any given school with one's local holdings for inventory purposes or to check for cataloging discrepancies. As noted earlier, even though this database contains almost two million records it is still not comprehensive on a global scale. When one combines a music subject heading with a foreign country or city in the institution field, the results are far less than one would expect. Whether this is a limitation of the First-Search engine or an indication of the low percentage of foreign dissertations titles held within the database can not be determined with certainty. Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online. Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, Indiana University. http://www.music.indiana.edu/ddm/ [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection.] The first edition of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology (DDM) contained 482 titles and appeared in print form in 1952. Since that time there have been numerous print volumes and a free online database that contains over 13,370 keyword searchable complete or in process titles. Unlike DAO, Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online (DDM-O) is only an index, so no abstracts are available. Nor can searching be fine-tuned to a specific field. If one were to search the keyword London, it would recall all titles with London as the institution, title, or author. …