iowa state thesis library

How do I find theses and dissertations?

Find iowa state theses and dissertations.

The full-text of most Iowa State University dissertations (1910-present) are freely available online through Digital Repository @ ISU . Dissertations prior to 2006 may also be available in print and can be located in Quick Search with an author and/or title search. The full-text of Masters theses from 2006 to the present are available through Proquest’s Dissertations & Theses @ Iowa State University . Off-campus users will need to login to access this resource.

Find Theses and Dissertations from other schools

• Includes: Dissertations and theses from around the world; 1743-present (majority 1997-present).
• Access: Requires current ISU affiliation (library login).
• Best for: finding dissertations and theses from American universities.
• Note: Includes participating American universities; growing number of international dissertations and theses; not all full-text .
• Includes: 4.4 million dissertations from around the world.
• Access: Open access, no login required.
• Best for: searching the largest number of dissertations and theses.
• Note : Not all dissertations and theses are available full-text.
• Includes: Covers 1100 institutions, over 3.2 million theses and dissertations.
• Best for: locating full-text, open access theses and dissertations.
• Note: Includes American universities not participating in ProQuest.

Links & Files

• Digital Repository @ ISU: Graduate Theses and Dissertations
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
• Electronic Theses/Dissertations (ETDs) at ISU
• Last Updated Jul 26, 2021
• Answered By Rano Marupova

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Digital Collections

Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) has a tradition of digitizing and providing online access to its collections. The links below take you to websites where you can search these digital objects.

Digital Collections , managed by the University Library Digital Initiatives , highlight works and collections from the Iowa State University Library, including material from SCUA. These materials include photographs, manuscripts, artifacts, books, and audiovisual formats.

Iowa State University Digital Repository provides free and open access to scholarly and creative works, research, publications and reports by Iowa State's faculty, students, staff and administrative units. University publications, theses, and extension reports are included in the Digital Repository that are also available, in their original format, in SCUA.

YouTube  displays a number of audiovisual materials held by SCUA, including films produced by Iowa State University and WOI-TV. These materials mostly focus on the activities of Iowa State faculty, staff, students, and alumni. They cover the topics of agriculture, science, technology, home economics, and campus events. 

Aviary provides enhanced access to audiovisual collections, including services such as closed captioning, full-text searching of captions and transcripts, and syncing of captions with text.

Online Exhibits provide a curated look at some of the stories found within the library’s unique, rare, and uncommon materials.

Archive-It is a website preservation service provided by the Internet Archive. Browse historic websites created by Iowa State University or other organizations whose records we collect.

Submit Your Thesis / Dissertation

Before Your Final Oral Exam

You can open your ProQuest even before you take the final oral exam. Here are some important areas to pay attention to:

• ONLY First letter of the first word, first word following a colon, and proper nouns are capitalized (Do not use all uppercase letters.)
• You can update the title before you submit your final file.
• You do not need to submit to ProQuest until after you have completed and passed your final exam.
• Match your name to your thesis/dissertation title page and university records.
• Do not use all uppercase letters.
• Make sure you enter the correct numbers.
• To update your Student ID number, go to the “Contact information” from the left menu.
• Match the names with the list from your thesis/dissertation title page.
• Fall graduation: December
• Spring graduation: May
• Summer graduation: August
• Make sure you enter at least one keyword about your thesis/dissertation.
• You can include up to 6 keywords.

After Your Final Oral Exam

• Make all the necessary edits as requested by your major professor(s) and committee members.
• Book a Format Check Appointment with a Thesis/Dissertation Consultant and/or
• Download and use the Formatting Checklist .
• Use the 'Submit Your Thesis/Dissertation to ProQuest' button at the top of this page to go to the next step.
• Final thesis/dissertation title (Update from your working title. Do not use all uppercase letters.)
• Your name (Match this with your thesis/dissertation title page.)
• Your institutional student ID number (Make sure this number is correct.)
• The names of your major professor and committee members (Match these names with your thesis/dissertation title page.)
• Degree Date (Select the correct month: December (Fall), May (Spring), August (Summer).
• Keywords (Include at least one keyword.)
• If you select an option, make sure that the same option is reflected in the Institutional Repository (IR) Publishing Option.
• For example, if you select 6 months delayed release in ProQuest, you must select 6 months for the IR Publishing Option.
• See this sample to make sure you got the details right.

After You Submit to Proquest

• If any changes are needed, they should be made within 24 hours if at all possible.
• If no further changes are needed, you will receive an acceptance e-mail.
• Scenario 2 : If the Graduate College reviewer does not require any revisions, you will receive an acceptance e-mail.
• Keep monitoring your email until you receive the final acceptance email.
• You will need to receive an acceptance e-mail before you will be allowed to graduate.

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Dissertations and Theses: Home

• Music Dissertations and Theses
• Access/Order a Thesis or Dissertation
• Getting your thesis bound

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - Full Text Indexes U.S. doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with 1 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format.
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses @ Big Ten Academic Alliance Institutions Big Ten Academic Alliance dissertations, including free full-text from 1997 to the present. Click on "Full-text" to download the complete dissertation.
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses @ The University of Iowa UI dissertations, including free full text from 1997 to the present. Click on "Full-text" to download the complete dissertation.

University of Iowa electronic Dissertations and Theses: Iowa Research Online

• Iowa Research Online Iowa Research Online (IRO) is a service of the University of Iowa Libraries dedicated to preserving and providing open access to the scholarly and creative work of the University. You can find electronic theses and dissertations from the UI.

Dissertations and Theses

• Australasian Digital Theses Program This database contains 135,254 theses, of which, 9,782 are in digital form, from post-graduate research students in 28 participating Australian universities.
• DART-Europe E-Theses Portal DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses. The DART-Europe partners help to provide researchers with a single European Portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), and they participate in advocacy to influence future European e-theses developments.
• Ebsco Open Dissertations OpenDissertations.org is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs that brings an innovative approach to increasing traffic and discoverability of ETD research.
• EThOS Electronic Theses Online Service: access to over 250,000 United Kingdom theses.
• Foreign Doctoral Dissertations CRL has more than 750,000 foreign doctoral dissertations that can be requested through the Interlibrary Loan service - http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/services/illdd.html.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) OATD aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 600 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes over 1.5 million theses and dissertations.
• SUDOC A French online catalog providing access to academic university libraries in France. To limit your search to theses, select the Advanced Search Screen and choose "Theses (version de soutenance)" as the publication type.
• Theses Canada Portal Electronic theses that were submitted to the Theses Canada program between 1998 and August 31, 2002.

UI Databases

Questions? Contact Us!

• Next: Music Dissertations and Theses >>
• Last Updated: Feb 27, 2024 2:28 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/dissertations

Assessment of status of Iowa exporters for ISO 9000 certification

Original bundle, collections.

Congratulations Spring 2024 Graduate & Undergraduate Award Winners!

Critical Literary Analysis Writing Award Awarded to an undergraduate or a graduate student for a single piece of critical exposition originally written for an English course at Iowa State University Malcolm Wei  

Cross-Disciplinary Linguistics Scholarship Awarded annually to one student majoring in linguistics for exceptional academic performance Nora Carlson Laura Dupuis

EnglQueer Outreach Award An annual award for raising awareness in the Iowa State community about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and transsexual issues Kaylynn Dresch Madison Mayfield

Graduate Student Leadership Award Rosalie Hirch

Outstanding Service by a Graduate Student Award Summer Awad Faith Ennis Kelli Fitzpatrick

Research Excellence Award Awarded to graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in a scholarly or creative thesis or dissertation Abdulrahman Alharthi Summer Awad Jessica Brock Leah Miller

  Teaching Excellence Award Awarded to graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in teaching Summer Awad Wren Bouwman Sebnem Kurt

Speech Communication Ray Dearin Award for Academic Excellence In recognition of a speech communication major who exhibits the strongest academic record within the major Nina Mitchell

Herta David Scholarship in English Awarded to Iowa State undergraduates majoring in English Owen Dargis Madison Omtvedt Krislynn Paisley Lio Sinko

Paul L. & Carolyn Errington Award In recognition of academic excellence, clarity, and effectiveness in expository writing related to environmental literary criticism Leah Miller

Pearl Hogrefe Grants in Creative Writing Awarded to graduate students who show extraordinary promise in creative writing Summer Awad Kelli Fitzpatrick Claire Jussel Zack Bukovich Leah Miller Zoe Stonestreet

Pearl Hogrefe First-Year Student Scholarship in Creative Writing In recognition of a first-year student whose work exemplifies promise or talent in one of the genres of creative writing Nathan Rehder Ava Rehm

Pearl Hogrefe Sophomore Scholarship in Creative Writing In recognition of an original and imaginative use of language and future promise in creative writing Hope Austin Tiaira Cordero Lopez Justin Naig Malcom Wei

Pearl Hogrefe Junior Scholarship in Creative Writing In recognition of outstanding originality, an unusual perspective, and a unique voice in creative writing Sarah Currier Timothy Didier Lainee Edwards Taylor Wickman

Pearl Hogrefe Senior Scholarship in Creative Writing In recognition of outstanding originality, an unusual perspective, and a unique voice in creative writing Alexandra Harwood Macie Murrane Tullaia Powell Cooper Pullis

Freda Huncke Endowment Award Awarded to undergraduate students majoring in English who demonstrate academic excellence and expository writing ability Lillian Atchison Bobbie Buie Krislynn Paisley Lio Sinko

Quentin G. Johnson Award Awarded to an undergraduate senior or a graduate student who has a strong academic record and shows promise in the study of linguistics Ainsley Kennedy

W. Paul Jones Scholarship In recognition of scholarly excellence in rhetoric and professional communication Shaya Kraut

Will C. Jumper Scholarship Awarded to Iowa State undergraduate students who demonstrate excellence in poetry writing Emma Allen Claire Haas Ainsley Kennedy

Pamela Henry Lassahn Scholarship in Technical Communication Awarded to an undergraduate student majoring in technical communication with a minor or designated area of concentration  in a technical or scientific field ATessa K. KHill Meghan Wilmes

James and Rachel Lowrie Family Awards In recognition of a junior or senior whose oral and written performance in English courses demonstrates outstanding growth, perception, and capability in the study of literature Atlas Cahill Karli Guthridge Elizabeth Marie (Liz) Jones Marielle Macdonald Riley Miller Meghan Wilmes

Kurt Moody Creative Writing Award Given in honor of Kurt Moody to Iowa State undergraduate students who demonstrate excellence in creative writing Gemma Borer Alexandra Harwood Nancy Herschberger

Richard R. Wright Award In recognition of academic excellence and demonstrated ability in expository writing Mariana Castro Azpiroz

All Articles

Digital Repository updates coming in 2024

Author: Anne Shelley

The  Iowa State University Digital Repository  is the Open Access system to collect, manage, share, preserve, and provide free, worldwide access to Iowa Staters’ research and scholarship. Items in the Digital Repository include but are not limited to journal articles (published and manuscript), conference proceedings and presentations, technical reports, book chapters, theses and dissertations, and creative components.  

Beginning in January 2024, Digital Repository staff will request a current curriculum vita or publications lists from participating authors to update the repository. Scholars with items in the repository can expect an email from [email protected] . Digital Repository staff will continue to monitor scholarship and reach out for updates as needed throughout the year.   

Because material in the Digital Repository is free for the public to access, there is potential for it to be read and cited more often than research behind a paywall. Every item in the Digital Repository is given a stable, permanent URL, making it easy to find, cite, and share.  

In late 2021, the Digital Repository migrated from a commercial system (Digital Commons and Selected Works) to an open-source platform (DSpace). With around 100,000 records, this migration was a large project and library staff continue to pursue improvements while adding new content. Iowa Staters may still have access to the Selected Works platform, however the library is no longer affiliated with it. Those with questions or feedback about the new DSpace platform should reach out to Anne Shelley at [email protected] . 

Digital Repository staff are eager to work with all faculty, students, and staff to add their research and scholarship to the repository. Contact [email protected]  to get started.   

People’s Law Library In Demand as Iowans Seek Resources for Legal Help

May 08, 2024.

The resource experienced steady growth of website traffic throughout the first year. Since last October, the site has averaged more than 7,400 visits per month, demonstrating the need for Iowans to be connected to trustworthy, reliable information as they navigate the complexities of the legal system.

Users typically find the site through search engines, libraries, or by being referred from partner organizations, including Senator Chuck Grassley’s office in Washington DC. The senator praised the People’s Law Library to State Librarian Michael Scott when he visited with the senator in March.

“Iowans who contact my office seek information on a number of topics. They deserve thorough, accurate responses. The People’s Law Library is a helpful resource my staff refer Iowans to, so that they get the answers they’re looking for,” Grassley said.

The State Library’s law librarian has also seen a 42 percent increase in reference questions, hearing from more than 1,500 members of the general public, librarians, attorneys, and others. The growth is primarily attributed to the People’s Law Library visitors and the convenient “Ask A Librarian” button that appears on nearly every page of the website.

“We know the law can be intimidating, and being able to offer the People’s Law Library as a resource for easy to understand legal information - especially at no cost - is so important,” said Scott. “You don’t have to create an account or sign up for a membership, you can come to the site, find the information you need, and come back when you have additional questions. We want people to feel empowered about their rights.”

The State Library partners with the University of Iowa Law Library to develop content for the website. Initially, the People’s Law Library offered three legal topic areas: Consumer Law, Family Law, and Housing Law. The website now boasts nine topics, adding Guardianships and Conservatorships, Abuse of Older Persons and Dependent Adults, Public Benefits Programs, Life Planning, and Veterans Law.

The newest topic area, Work Law, launched this month. Work Law’s informational pages are organized by stage of the employment process; from before employment, to active employment, and after a job has ended, allowing for easy navigation based on an individual’s unique needs.

Professor Carissa Vogel, Director of the University of Iowa Law Library, emphasized the importance of an entry point to work law: “Work law can be a tangled web of legislation, regulation, and interpretation. The People’s Law Library is designed to provide a starting point for anyone who needs to untangle that web.”

The University of Iowa Law Library continues to work on developing additional legal topics for the website.

Visit and bookmark the People’s Law Library website at:

www.PeoplesLawIowa.org

The People’s Law Library of Iowa is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of Iowa.

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• Library Guides
• Writing, citing, and using information

EndNote & EndNote Web

• Using EndNote for Graduate Theses and Dissertations
• Getting Started
• Adding References
• Using References
• Creating Bibliographies
• FAQ & Support

A common request from graduate students who are writing their thesis or dissertation is for instructions on how to use EndNote and Cite While You Write to create a "journal-style" bibliography - one where each chapter of the document has its own bibliography rather than the document as a whole having one big one at the end. There are different ways to accomplish this that depend on whether you are using the full EndNote software or EndNote Web.

EndNote Software

The full EndNote software can leverage the document structure tools within Microsoft Word itself to accomplish this.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you have created a new Section for each segment of your document that you wish to have its own bibliography. You do this by placing the cursor where you wish the current section to end, then from the Layout tab select the Breaks dropdown and select the Section break type that matches your preference.

The second required element is simply to be using a citation style in Cite While You Write that uses these section breaks. If the one you've already selected is set to do so and you've already inserted the citations into your paper, the above step should have resulted in the new bibliographies automatically. If you're unsure, it's an easy thing to check in EndNote itself.

If you're using EndNote 20 or later, click in the Tools menu and then go to Output Styles and click on Open Style Manager. If you're using EndNote X9 or earlier, you start in the Edit menu instead of Tools.

From there, find the style that you're interested in using and double click (or click once to select it and then click the Edit button). In the window this opens, browse into the Sections area.

From there you can select the option that matches how you wish to have Cite While You Write manage the document sections. That is, you can have one bibliography at the end, a new bibliography for each section (with or without continuous numbering throughout the document), or both.

EndNote Web

Unfortunately, the free web-based version of EndNote cannot support multiple bibliographies, even if the citation style selected in Cite While You Write is configured to do so. As such, we need to use a work-around of one form or another. All of which simply require that you save each "section" of your final document as its own Word file while you're working and simply use Cite While You Write normally within each document.

Most of this process from here on will assume that you've completed your writing and are simply preparing the final document.

You will want to make sure that all documents have used the same citation style in Cite While You Write so that everything is consistent and that the bibliographies are complete. Additionally, they should be titled such that alphabetical ordering has them in the correct sequence - the methods we'll be using to combine them later default to file name order.

Now that you have your collection of separate files for your various chapters, there are two main methods to combine them: using Word itself or Adobe Acrobat. Both programs have methods of building a new file from a series of existing ones.

Instructions for Microsoft Word

It is strongly advised that you save a backup copy of all of your files at this point . We are about to make one-way transformations that cannot be undone, so having a backup is important.

In each document, in the EndNote tab there is a drop-down menu for Convert Citations and Bibliography. Click into that and then on Convert to Plain Text and save the new document separately so that you do not overwrite the old version. This command strips out all of the internal "hooks" in the document that EndNote and Cite While You Write use to edit your document automatically.

Once that is done for all sections, open a new blank document and click into the Insert menu. One option available is for Object with a sub-option of Text From File.

The window this opens allows you to select all of the files to be combined into a single Word Document. In my testing, this appears to be a one-time event so editing the base documents does not edit the final one so this step will need to be repeated if you do make any edits to the base documents. You may find that you need to add page breaks between your sections, but because we're still within a Word context you can still use automated page numbering.

Because we stripped out all of the EndNote "hooks" in the previous step, you cannot edit the imported text using Cite While You Write. If we had not done so, you could still edit the citations here, but any editing "event" that triggers CWYW to update the citations and bibliography will simply create an updated, full-document bibliography at the end of the file and will not update any internal bibliographies. It's simpler and less likely to cause problems if you strip out that functionality ahead of time.

Instructions for Adobe Acrobat

You will likely want to edit the page numbering of every file in turn so that they begin on the page following the end of the previous file. You can do this in Word by clicking into the Header/Footer to bring up the appropriate menu. From there select the Page Number option and click on Format Page Numbers. In the window that brings up, simply select the Start At radio button and enter the appropriate page to begin the current document.

In Adobe Acrobat (either on its own or via the Adobe Creative Cloud package), you can combine discrete Word documents into a single file. Under the Tools menu there is a Combine Files option. Simply drag the files you wish to combine into the designated space in the order you wish them to appear and click on Combine. This option will automatically start each document on a new page, but won't renumber them, which is why we needed to do that step earlier. Additionally, since Acrobat doesn't have any equivalent functionality to Cite While You Write further edits can't be made using EndNote directly.

Comprehensive Bibliography

If you wish to also have a bibliography at the end of your document, it's relatively straightforward do create one in one of two ways.

The first option requires you to have done some organizational work ahead of time or to do so now. The EndNote Web interface itself can generate a bibliography for you based on a "Group" of references. If you've already been organizing the references you're using for this project into a single Group you're all set, otherwise you'll have to build that Group now.

Once that's done, you can click into the Format --> Bibliography section of your account. In the three drop-down menus, select the name of the Group that your references are in, the citation style you've used for your paper, and RTF format (the other options are a Text file which wouldn't be able to include things like italicized text and HTML which would likely work, but Rich Text is more likely to copy and paste into Word cleanly).

Clicking Save should process the references and save a .rtf file in your usual downloads location. You will want to open that file in Word and edit it to use the same formatting style as the rest of your document (typeface, font size, margins, etc.). From there you can either include it in the "combining" steps above or if working in Word you can simply copy and paste the text at the end of the document.

The other option for creating a comprehensive bibliography is a bit messy. We'll just be opening each file comprising your documents various sections, copying the contents, and then pasting everything into a single Word file. If you had already written your paper before coming to this guide, you likely already have a suitable file saved somewhere. Once you've got all of your content in this one file, click on Update Citations and Bibliography button in the EndNote menu of Word and it should build the single bibliography at the end of your document. Save a backup and go through the Convert To Plain Text steps mentioned in the "Instructions for Microsoft Word" section above to get a version of the bibliography that you can copy and paste freely without worrying about CWYW making further edits. At that point you can add it to your paper using the methods described above.

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• Last Updated: May 13, 2024 2:54 PM
• URL: https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/endnoteweb