Design and Innovation: Theses

The Library receives a copy of all major theses awarded at ATU. This collection comprises thousands of volumes of primary research in all subject areas.

• Theses are held in bound hardcopy behind the restricted theses area behind the issue desk.
• Bound hardcopy theses may not be borrowed and can only be read in the Library.

Searching for Theses in the Library

The easiest way to find a print thesis in ATU Library on a particular topic, is to key in 'and thesis' in the search box with your search term, and selecting 'dissertation' in the content type filter. A search using the classic catalogue will work well for this type of content also.

• Once you have typed in what you are looking for in Search + Find, use the left hand panel on the results page to select Dissertations/Theses under Source Type to limit the results to dissertations and theses only.

• If the thesis is in print take note of the class number, go to the library desk and request the thesis for consultation purposes using the unique class number. 

• If the thesis is online click on the 'Full Text' or 'Online Access' button to view the thesis online. If you are viewing an undergraduate thesis you will be prompted to enter your ATU email address and network password.

Other Universities' Theses

You can locate details of theses submitted in other Universities from the following open access sources:

• BASE, operated by Bielefeld University Library, is one of the world's biggest search engines especially for academic open access web resources.
• DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses.
• Digital Commons network is one of the biggest repositories in the academic world, bringing together free, full-text scholarly articles from universities and colleges worldwide.
• EThOS offers free access to the full text of selected UK theses.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations is a global digital library of theses and dissertations.
• Open Access theses and dissertations aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world.
• Rian is a repository that combines the research and higher theses of 16 individual repositories (including Research@THEA).

There are many other open access resources available, all include theses and dissertations as a content type. See our LibGuide on Open Access for further information.

Online Postgraduate Theses

Research@THEA is the institutional repository for the Connacht-Ulster Alliance Libraries.

This repository makes research, taught masters and Ph.D theses from ATU, LYIT and ITSligo available online.

Other research, including conference proceedings and journal articles by staff and students are also available in the open access repository.

PQDT Open provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge. You can quickly and easily locate dissertations and theses relevant to your discipline, and view the complete text in PDF format.