APLA 2019

Within the past few years, many Canadian universities have ceased contributing their theses and dissertations to the Proquest Theses and Dissertations database. The database, abbreviated as PQDT, had for a long time been the largest and most reliable source of indexing and, later, full text of theses and dissertations within North America and many other parts of the world. But the rise of institutional repositories, the open access movement, and issues with the quality of PQDT digitization have all led to a decline in university contributions to PQDT, particularly from Canada. The database no longer provides the “one-stop shopping” it once did for graduate students, researchers, and library staff seeking the freshest and newest academic research.

This presentation will report on a research project that involved testing and ranking 12 theses and dissertation gateways using the following criteria: Ease of use, Search capabilities, Geographic location of content, Amount and currency of content, Unique features, and Presence of sham content. The goal of the research is to rank the top contenders to replace PQDT, giving graduate students, researchers, and library staff a new list – likely longer than 1 but hopefully shorter than 12 – of the best databases to use to discover theses and dissertations on a subject.