Welcome to the third post in our mini-series about San Francisco History Center resources on the history of African Americans in San Francisco. Last week's post, Books and Newspapers, looked at two types of published sources. Today's post tackles a type of quasi-published material known as "grey literature": Dissertations and theses.
Dissertations and theses are often revised and subsequently published as books, but in and of themselves, they are unpublished, book-length scholarly monographs that are distributed outside of the mainstream publishing world, through university libraries who keep copies of their students' theses, and/or through distribution via ProQuest Information and Learning (formerly UMI--University Microfilms International).
Dissertations and theses fill an important niche as sources for doing research. Often, there is no published book on a research topic, but there might be a thesis or dissertation available. Sometimes dissertations and theses can provide bibliographic citations that lead the researcher back to excellent primary source material.
Here is a link to our library catalog, listing some dissertations and theses about African American people in San Francisco that we have here in the San Francisco History Center.
If you're interested in searching for more dissertations on a wide variety of subjects, visit the Dissertations Abstracts database on our Articles and Databases page, available free through the library either on-site with SFPL computers or remotely with your library card number and PIN.
Dissertations and theses are often revised and subsequently published as books, but in and of themselves, they are unpublished, book-length scholarly monographs that are distributed outside of the mainstream publishing world, through university libraries who keep copies of their students' theses, and/or through distribution via ProQuest Information and Learning (formerly UMI--University Microfilms International).
Dissertations and theses fill an important niche as sources for doing research. Often, there is no published book on a research topic, but there might be a thesis or dissertation available. Sometimes dissertations and theses can provide bibliographic citations that lead the researcher back to excellent primary source material.
Here is a link to our library catalog, listing some dissertations and theses about African American people in San Francisco that we have here in the San Francisco History Center.
If you're interested in searching for more dissertations on a wide variety of subjects, visit the Dissertations Abstracts database on our Articles and Databases page, available free through the library either on-site with SFPL computers or remotely with your library card number and PIN.
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