Below is a list of theses and dissertations websites; nearly all of them allow free searching:
Abes: Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Superieur (from France)
Australian Digital Theses Program
Caltech theses
Center for Research Libraries foreign dissertations
Cybertesis.net (University of Chile, provides access to 27,000 etheses from 35 world universities)
DART-Europe E-theses Portal (DEEP) (European Working Group of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Access to 106,000 doctoral theses.)
Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology (This is an international database of citations for dissertations in musicology that contains over 12,000 records. Dissertations are from approximately 1950 to the present. This is probably more appropriate for a public or music library.)
Digital Library and Archives (Digital Library and Archives allows searching for citations and abstracts of over 6,700 theses and dissertations. Free full-text access is provided for over 4,500 of these items.)
Directory of Dissertations in Progress (“The Directory contains 3,804 dissertations in progress at 170 academic departments in Canada and the U.S.” This is a citation database of dissertations in progress in the area of history.)
Dissertation Express (Online version of Dissertation Abstracts from UMI Proquest. Good for US theses. It’s free to search the database. To order full text costs $34 each. Digital Dissertations is a subset comprising all dissertations in the Dissertation Abstracts database with a degree date of the current and previous year. It’s easier to search and browse and you also get 24 page previews before you buy.)
Dissertation.com (Dissertation.com has just a few hundred dissertations and theses in its collection, but the site allows free, full-text access to the first twenty-five pages of each item.)
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UVa)
ERIC
E-Theses (from Finland)
EThOS (Full text of theses from the British Library. This is running in beta at the moment.)
Le Fichier central des thèses (French dissertations in progress)
Index to Theses (Subscription database)
M.I.T. Theses
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD provides access to citations from thousands of digital dissertations and theses that are in PDF format. A significant number of these resources are freely available in full-text and can be viewed online.)
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/faq.html#who-can-use
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/world.cgi
PhdData: The Universal Index of Dissertations in Progress (PhdData has citations from several thousand dissertations in progress from various parts of the world.)
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) (Subscription database)
Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
RIM: Research in Ministry Online (RIM® Online is a freely available database that indexes DMin and DMiss projects from reporting schools of theology accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Indexing began in 1981.)
Rutgers Electronic Theses & Dissertations (RUetd)
TEL : thèses en ligne
Theses Canada Portal (Theses Canada provides access to bibliographic citations for all the theses in the National Library of Canada Theses Collection. Access to full-text theses is available for all items published between January 1, 1998 to August 31, 2002.)
Thèses de l'Université de Lyon 2
TREN: Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN provides citations to 6,800 theological theses/dissertations and conference papers. Items can then be purchased through this site. The opening page actually states that they have 10,000 theses/dissertations, but the search page allows searching of 6,800 items.)
University of Miami Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Vidyanidhi: Digital Library and E-Scholarship Portal (from India)
WorldCat dissertations and theses (Although the WorldCat Dissertations & Theses database is only available by subscription to FirstSearch, WorldCat is available for free. The advanced search screen allows you to limit by Content to Thesis/Dissertation. Here is the link: http://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch)
