Visual Studies: Secret Weapons

An incredible amount of scholarly, easily-accessed information can be found in dissertations.  Use them to find:

• a comprehensive bibliography on your topic
• a discussion of the research problem, and ongoing needs (the "Introduction")
• chapters treating your topic (table of contents--particularly detailed in dissertations)

1. Dissertations full text (PQDT) - except for a handful of schools and a handful of old thesis, essentially all full-text dissertations from North American universities.

2. British dissertations (EThOS) - British Library's service of UK dissertations.  Not as comprehensive as PQDT, but worth searching.

Document Delivery (formerly known as Interlibrary Loan) borrows books, DVDs and journal articles from other libraries--internationally--for use by you.  For books, use the Worldcat link (next tab on this guide). 

• Articles - articles will be scanned by the owning institution and be sent to your email (allow one week generally)
• Books - requests will go out the same day from Duke.  We have no control on the lending library, however, who must retrieve, charge and mail the item to Duke (allow two weeks)

Your Duke id is a UNC, NC State and NC Central library card!

If you see an item available at one of our TRLN (Triangle Region Library Network) libraries and you can't wait for Document Delivery, you may check out the book directly by going to that library and charging it with your Duke ID.

A truck runs daily between TRLN libraries to deliver material faster between these institutions.