3.1090 citing dissertations, cont. (35)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Thu, 22 Feb 90 21:18:55 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1090. Thursday, 22 Feb 1990.

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 01:06:38 EDT
From: "Matthew B. Gilmore" <GY945C@GWUVM>
Subject: citing theses & dissertations

Doesn't citing theses and dissertations have something to do with
their accessibility?
Why do you cite anything at all? Verification and proof of your
sources. Well, at least until recently, theses and dissertations
were hard to get a hold of, both bibliograpically and physically.
They are not "published" in the same way a book/article is,
and are not as readily available. So what good did it do your
reader to know that something could be found in a dissertation--
they didn't have access.

Now access is just expensive and time consuming--either through
UMI or through the university for those who do not submit copies
to UMI.

Level of sophistication might be an issue in whether to cite
a MA/MS thesis. For some fields if the work was not done for
the PhD it probably just is not seen as part of the scholarly
communication of that discipline.

Comments?

Matthew Gilmore