Dissertations in Music: Home

Comprehensive

Proquest Dissertations & Theses Full Text offers citations (1861-present), abstracts (1980-present), and full-text (1997-present) for doctoral dissertations from accredited American and Canadian universities, as well as a selection of British and European universities. UCB access only. 

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) compiles resources for finding available open-access electronic theses and dissertations. Links to collections of over 200,000 theses and dissertations from around the world, many available in full text for free.

WorldCat Dissertations covers dissertations and theses in WorldCat, a catalog of materials owned by libraries worldwide. UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and students may request interlibrary loan for dissertations found in WorldCat Dissertations through the Request option in UC-eLinks.  UCB access only. 

Center for Research Libraries offers a catalog with citations to 800,000 doctoral dissertations from universities outside the U.S. and Canada. Items can be obtained through the UC Berkeley Interlibrary Borrowing Service.

Geographical Portals

DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia working together to improve global access to European research theses by providing a single European Portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).

Index to Theses is a comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716. The latest update contains links to items available in full-text through EThOS, the Electronic Theses Online Service, a British Library portal to UK theses. For music dissertations in progress the Royal Musical Association's Register of Research Students' Dissertation Topics covers universities in UK and Ireland. UCB access only.  

A record of all theses defended in France since 1985, as well as dissertations in progress, is available online at thesis.fr.  The union catalog of the Système universitaire de documentation (Sudoc) contains citations to dissertations from 1972 to the present; the mission of Sudoc is to list all dissertations/theses produced in France. Useful print equivalents are the Catalogue des thèses reproduites, available at Z5055.F8.L58 in Doe Reference, which lists dissertations at French universities from 1988 to the present, and the listing of earlier dissertations, 1884-1978, in Catalogue des thèses de doctorat soutenues devant les universites française, available from NRLF storage

Theses Canada Portal is a searchable catalog of all Canadian theses published since 1965, many of which are available in full-text electronic versions which can be downloaded free by students, scholars, and the public.

Music-Specific Portals

Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology—Online provides citations for completed dissertations and dissertations in progress since 1995 in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines. DDM Online also includes all the records previously published in the printed editions of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology, available in the Music Library at ML128.M8.J6 (1961-1984) and ML128.M8.J7 (1984-1995). Coverage became international in 1984. Records in this index are largely submitted voluntarily by dissertation authors. See also Music Theory Online: Dissertation Index.

Dissertationsmeldestelle der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (DMS) is the German language equivalent to Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology—Online, with focus on Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. A printed, retrospective bibliography of German language dissertations in music may be found in Richard Schaal, Verzeichnis deutschsprachiger musikwissenschaftlicher Dissertationen, 1861-1960, (Kassel: Baerenreiter, 1963), available in the reference collection at ML120.G3.S25, with a 1974 supplement covering dissertations to 1970 at ML120.G3.S253. This printed list is updated annually in Die Musikforschung, under the heading "Im Jahre xxxx angenommene musikwissenschaftlicher Dissertationen," available in the Music Library at ML5.M873. [The Austrian Dissertations Database comprises all Austrian dissertations from 1990 onwards and includes abstracts in English.]

Dissertations started being deposited digitally about 2009, so the full-text of more recent documents should be available online directly from UC Library Search. Proquest Dissertations & Theses  contains most theses since about 1996 available in full-text PDF files, as well a selection of dissertations from as far back as 1963, making it the best first-choice resource to use.

The Library generally has a printed copy of all theses and dissertations written for degrees granted at UC Berkeley. Individual dissertations are found in UC Library Search using author, title (or keyword) searches. 

Printed copies of UCB Music dissertations are housed in a closed stack collection designated in the catalogs as "Case X." Request "Case X" materials at the circulation desk, where they will be retrieved by library staff. Dissertations may be checked out for use only in the Music Library.

An Excel file with a chronological list of all theses accepted at the UC Berkeley Department of Music through January 2014 indicates the lag time in processing before recent work becomes available online.