Dissertations Academic, lists

Ministry of Education, Paris, Catalogue des theses et escrits academique, Paris, 1884 +. Annual listing of academic dissertations, classified with author, subject, and title indexes. Dissertations from all French universities are included. 

No national listing of academic dissertations is at present prepared. L. New-combe, in a report of the Proceedings of the Sixteenth Coriference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, discusses the accessibility of British university thesis literature in 1939. En and, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland are covered. Newcombe lists British universities together with names of publications which list titles or give abstracts of university dissertations. 

Library of Congress, List of American Doctoral Dissertations Printed in 1912-1938, Government Printing OflRce, Washington, D. C., 1913-1940. Includes only printed academic dissertations received by the Library of Gongress. Most dissertations are unpublished some are in journal reprint form, others are mimeographed copies. 

Annual listings of academic dissertations accepted and issued by universities have not gainea wide circulation. Indeed, their inclusion in standard indexing and abstracting tools is somewhat of a chance matter. These annual listings are sometimes published in book form, more often in pamphlet form, and sometimes in form of an article in an education journal, a society journal, or a university periodical. Whatever the case may be, the circulation of these lists is most often limited. 

After selectively searching through one, several, or all of the tools listing academic dissertations, and exhausting task in itself, one is faced with the problem of obtaining a copy of individual theses which seem of interest. Unfortunately, no library in the United States has a complete file of dissertations from American colleges and universities. It is known that the library of the institution where the degree was earned holds a copy of the dissertation. Occasionally, one may borrow... 

An international listing and depository would help, to be sure, but the world situation would indicate that there is much to be desired where international cooperation is concerned. Such international cooperation is not too much to hope for, but immediate success in such a venture is not likely. It is apparent that thesis literature seldom appears in bibliographies appended to research reports because academic dissertations are not readily accessible even in this country. The academy of science of an individual country may be able to help in tracing theses. It is well to be aware of the activities of the academies in various countries. In 1956, A. Vucinich, San Jose State Gollege, described the Soviet Academy of Sciences which had been reorganized with the aim of centralizing scientific research (16). 

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