Your Senior Honors Thesis or Masters Thesis

When you’ve completed your thesis, bring a clean copy (no staples, holes, or bindings of any sort) along with your signed release form to the Archives & Special Collections department on Goldfarb Level 2. Release forms are available from your departmental administrator, in Archives & Special Collections, and on our website at: lts.brandeis.edu/research/archives-speccoll/collections/archives/thesis_release_form.pdf.

You may also send your thesis to us by inter-campus mail, or by post. Our inter-campus mailbox number is MS 045, and our mailing address is: Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Library and Technology Services, Brandeis University, P.O. Box 549110, Waltham, MA, 02454-9100.

While we do require that you fill out the top part of the Thesis Release Form (granting us permission to have a copy of your thesis), you are not required to sign the bottom portion indicating that you allow us to photocopy your thesis for other researchers. However, we do strongly encourage you to grant such permission as we receive many photocopy requests from researchers around the world who are interested in the topics our students write about. These researchers are required to fill out a form indicating that they will not violate your copyright and have permission to use the material for educational purposes only.

Your thesis will be bound, cataloged in LOUIS, and housed permanently in the University Archives, usually by the end of the following semester. We are sorry to say that we cannot bind a personal copy for you.

Finding Theses and Dissertations

Senior honors theses can be found in the LOUIS catalog. You may search for a specific thesis by author or title. To search for theses by department, click on the advanced search screen in LOUIS and do the following keyword search: senior honors theses AND dept of ______ (your department of interest). In the Collection box at the bottom of the page, select University Archives. LOUIS will then retrieve all available theses produced in that department in reverse chronological order (most recent first).

If you know the particular thesis or theses you’d like to see, bring a list of call numbers to the University Archives and we’ll retrieve the theses for you. You are also welcome to search for theses using the public workstation in our reading room. Theses do not circulate and must be looked at in the Archives & Special Collections reading room. We will make photocopies for you if the author has granted permission to do so; we charge $.20 per page for Brandeis affiliates and accept cash and check only.

The University Archives also houses a small collection of Masters theses, which may be searched in the LOUIS catalog. As of fall 2009, all incoming Masters students in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences will be required to submit their theses in print and electronic format. Print theses will be maintained in the University Archives, while the electronic versions will be deposited in the new Brandeis Institutional Repository. For questions regarding the submission of Masters theses, please contact Helene Greenberg at the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences: hgreenbe@brandeis.edu. Like senior honors theses, Masters theses may be photocopied or downloaded if the author has granted permission in writing.

Dissertations are published by UMI and are available in both print and electronic format. All Brandeis dissertations may be searched in LOUIS, and members of the Brandeis community may access electronic versions directly from the LOUIS catalog or via Dissertations and Theses at Brandeis University, a database available through Brandeis Scholar on the LTS website. Print copies are housed in the library stacks and may be borrowed by members of the Brandeis community. For outside researchers, UMI makes print copies available for purchase through Amazon.com.