History of Science: Find Books / Ebooks / Dissertations

UC Library Search 

UC Library Search, accessible from the search box on the library's homepage, helps you locate books, film, music, maps, and various other materials at the UC San Diego Library and beyond. It also contains a limited number of online journals and newspaper articles. You may search by keyword, title, and author, and filter your search to what is available online. You can also place an interlibrary loan request through UC Library Search for materials at other UC campuses or libraries worldwide using your Single Sign-On credentials.

Search Tips 

• Sign in to access full results lists, electronic resources, request items, and save records. To access electronic resources, you must be logged into the VPN.
• Capitalize the operators AND, OR, NOT when combining key search terms.
• To request items that the Library doesn't have click the Request button.
• Click Digitalization to request scans of print book chapters or print articles.

UC Library Search is one part of your complete search.

UC Library Search does not include all the content to which the Library subscribes. To extend your search, try a database. The database you use depends on the topic or subject you have chosen and the type of information you need to access. You may choose among broad subject areas (e.g., biology, art, political science, etc.), as well as interdisciplinary databases or ones that search across multiple disciplines. 

You must also be logged into the VPN to access the information for any database with a blue lock icon. 

A-Z Databases

See the Dissertations & Theses Research Guide for more information.

Various subject-based databases index and abstract dissertations and some theses that you can use as sources for your research and templates for your own theses.  These include:

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses   

This database indexes and abstracts 2.3 million works issued by graduate institutions in North America and beyond from 1861 to the present. PDF full texts of most UC dissertations starting about 1997 are available online at no charge.

If the dissertation or theses is not available full-text

•  you may be able to find an open-access copy with a Google Search, since many universities provide free access
• Or you can likely get it through Interlibrary Loan

Center for Research Libraries   

CRL is a good source for foreign dissertations; our CRL membership provides free loans for UCSD researchers.

Additional ETD Links   

Use this UCSD LibGuide for more links to ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) repositories across the globe.

UC Dissertations and Theses can also be found by

• Using UC Library Search  and selecting dissertations from the Resource Type facet
• Searching UC eScholarship for University of California ETDs
  • To limit to ETDs, click on the thesis box in the menu on the left. To limit to a particular campus, select the drop down option and the campus you want to search.  To limit to MA Theses (rather than dissertations) in a particular field, put anthropology thesis into the search box in the upper right-hand corner and select "This Series," rather than "All of e-Scholarship."

There are also additional resources to find Undergraduate Theses:

• UCSD Political Science Undergraduate Theses
• Claremont Colleges Respository of Theses and Dissertations which are all pretty interdisciplinary and intercollegiate.  They can be searched by subject -- select the group you want to search (for example Pomona senior theses and put in your keyword(s).  Here's a note regarding various schools' specializations and tendencies:
  • CMC - heavily political science, economics, govt
  • Scripps - math, gender, women's studies
  • HMC - STEM
  • Pitzer - social justice
  • Pomona - across the board
• https://undergraduatecommons.com/ is the international aggregator of undergraduate research and you can filter by Type - here's the link for honors theses and capstone projects: https://undergraduatecommons.com/publication_type.html

See the eBooks research guide for lists of major ebook collections and significant information about how to print, download and/or read ebook material online.

Key UCSD ebook collections with chemistry and biochemistry titles. You can search for titles in UC Library Search or at the publisher websites. title/full-text at the publisher websites.

• If you search at the publisher websites, expect large sets of search results, due to the full-text book searching (and journals if applicable). Searches have to be more specific.
• Unless otherwise specified, we don't have access to all ebooks from a particular publisher. Check the catalog for a print copy, or request via Interlibrary Loan.