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The North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library has paper copies of ALL UNC Chapel Hill theses and dissertations, including those from Health Affairs, and also the only copies of some pre-1930 dissertations and theses. The NCC's copies do not circulate and are not in an area open for browsing. You can assume that the NCC will have a copy of a UNC Chapel Hill dissertation or thesis even if the catalogs do not reveal this.

Davis Library has circulating copies of many theses and dissertations completed at UNC Chapel Hill. The Health Sciences Library has copies of the theses and dissertations completed in Health Affairs departments. Some dissertations and theses are also located in the Library Service Center and can be requested through the Carolina BLU Campus Delivery Service. Most UNC Chapel Hill theses and dissertations can be found in the online catalog.

Dissertation - Presents original research and is written as part of the requirements for obtaining a doctorate.
Thesis - Presents original research and is written as part of the requirements for obtaining a master's degree.
Master's Paper - Some master's programs at UNC do not have an official "thesis" but rather require a major paper or report.
Undergraduate Honors Thesis - Written and defended by Honors Carolina undergraduate students in order to graduate with Honors or Highest Honors.

Finding Dissertations

The Dissertations & Theses database is a good place to begin a dissertation search.

The Dissertations & Theses @ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Only indexes theses and dissertations completed at UNC Chapel Hill. It indexes Chapel Hill dissertations from the 1920's on, with full text from 1997 on. It also indexes some theses from 1966 on, with full text from 2006 on for selected masters' theses. Indexing of UNC-CH dissertations is selective, especially for the earlier years.

Most UNC dissertations are in the UNC-CH catalog. If searching for a known author or title, searching the online catalog is the most efficient way to search: A sample search:

title = "Chaucer's relative constructions"

You can also use the Boolean Search feature of the Advanced UNC-CH Catalog to perform Keyword Searches for UNC dissertations.

Conducting a Keyword Search for Dissertations

Although most dissertations are in the online catalog, dissertations before 1964 have no subject headings. Searching for key words in the titles will help get at "subjects" for these items. Do not use ONLY standard LC Subject Headings. Be creative with appropriate key words, synonyms, and variants as well.

You will be searching for "thesis phd or thesis ph d", which will appear as a note in the catalog record. You can use subject headings, title words, an author's last name, etc., and add "and thesis phd or thesis ph d". It is advisable to enter the "phd" both ways because of spacing variations. A sample search:

shakespeare and (thesis phd or thesis ph d) and "north carolina"

However, as noted above, Dissertations & Theses is the most efficient way to search for dissertations on a topic. If you do search for dissertations in the online catalog, you should add "and north carolina" to try and weed out dissertations from other schools, but this can lead to false drops and omissions.

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URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/subjectguides/dissthesis/unc.html
This page was last updated Tuesday, August 07, 2012.

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