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Video Transcripts

Nontraditional Sources: Dissertations or Theses

Last updated 5/6/2020

 

Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title “Nontraditional Sources” and the video title “Dissertations and Theses.”

Audio: Guitar music

 

Visual: Slide changes to one titled “Dissertations and Theses.” The slide reads as follows:

Retrieved from a database:

Henry, Threatt, T. (2009). Gender and the writing center: How students’ problems in writing fall into gendered categories of difference (Order No. 3375367) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Nevada, Reno]. ProQuest dissertations and Theses Global.

Retrieved online (archive):

Baker, J. (2018). Because I write: A teacher-writer teaches writing [Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota]. University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy. http://hdl.handle.net/11299/211312

Audio: When creating a reference entry for a dissertation or thesis, you’ll need to include some additional institutional information about where the author completed their degree. For these types of sources, you’ll list the author and the year like most other sources. Then, you’ll include the title in sentence case and italicized, followed by any publication numbers for the dissertation or thesis. This is followed by the words “Doctoral dissertation” or “Master’s thesis”, in brackets, depending on whether you’re citing a dissertation or thesis. Then follows the university the author graduated from. These elements apply to both of our examples here.

The final publication element of the entries, however, changes depending on if you retrieved the source from a database or online via an institutional archive. In the first case, a database, you’ll include the database name to complete the entry. In the second example, online via an archive, you’ll list the archive where you accessed the dissertation or thesis and the URL.

 

Visual: The following citations are added to the slide: (Threatt, 2009) and (Baker, 2018)

Audio: Your citations for dissertations and theses will also look like any other citation, pulling the author and publication year. And that’s it! That’s how you cite dissertations and theses.

 

Visual: Slide changes to notebook with Walden logo from introduction. Text reads: “Walden University Writing Center. Questions? Email writingsupport@waldenu.edu."
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