Finding theses
This page introduces how to find theses from Edinburgh Napier University and other UK institutions.
For Edinburgh Napier University, you may be able to access PhD, DBA and research-based (not taught) Masters theses. We do not hold copies of undergraduate dissertations within the libraries or online.
ETHOS – Delays to delivery (updated October 2024)
The British Library was subject to a cyber incident last year and most of their systems have been offline since then. This outage includes British Library document delivery and inter-library loans services. As a result, there may be problems supplying Edinburgh Napier University inter-library loan requests and there will be delays to delivery. Currently we have no further information about the likely duration of these issues.
Find an Edinburgh Napier University thesis
Find a thesis online
You'll find the wider and historical range of Edinburgh Napier PhD theses stored in hardcopy in secure storage at Merchiston Library.
Find a hardcopy thesis
Hardcopy theses (from before 2020) are stored in Merchiston Library, and listed on LibrarySearch.
To find a list of available theses, go to LibrarySearch:
- Search for 'napier university'.
- On the right hand side, under Tweak my Results> Library/Collection, click on Edinburgh Napier theses to limit your search.
This will give you a list of hundreds of theses (and some other Edinburgh Napier-related items).
If you want to find a thesis on a particular subject, search as above but with your subject keywords instead of 'napier university'. Be aware that thesis subjects are very specific, so you may have to keep trying different keywords.
To borrow a hardcopy thesis
Ask at the helpdesk in Merchiston Library. Library staff will ask you to fill out a short form, and then bring you the thesis from secure storage.
Note that you can only borrow a thesis for three hours at a time (some theses are embargoed and cannot be borrowed). You cannot take it out of the Library or photocopy it.
Find a UK thesis from another institution
To find a UK thesis from an institution that is not Edinburgh Napier University, search EThOS - the British Library E-theses Online Service.
If the thesis is not available full-text online from EThOS, there may be a link to the institutional repository. You may be able to request digitisation from EThOS for free. If you can't find/access the thesis for free, email your Subject Librarian for further help. Send full details of the thesis, including a link to the thesis details on EThOS, if available.
Other repositories
If you are looking for repositories from other universities, the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) is an international database tracking the location and growth of open access institutional repositories.