Library Lessons From Calvary Chapel University
By Codie Winslow, Director of Library and Learning Resources
Advanced research is required to support advanced degree programs like those Calvary Chapel University (CCU) offers in the College of Education (Master of Arts in Christian Education and Doctor of Christian Education) and the College of Biblical Studies (Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Biblical Studies). It is our goal at CCU Library to connect you to resources for higher level research like PQDT Open.
What is PQDT Open you ask? Powered by ProQuest, a leader in curating innovative digital information and resources for researchers and libraries, PQDT Open provides the full text of open access (free of charge) dissertations and theses. You can quickly and easily locate dissertations and theses relevant to your discipline and view the complete text in PDF format.
As a graduate or doctoral student, research papers like theses and dissertations can be a significant resource to support your personal research as they cover ideas that have already been investigated and potentially proved. Reading essays written by other students just like you can also provide a sense of inspiration and may provide a deeper level of information literacy in academic research.
You can search by topic, key word, author, degree year, and more. Let’s take a tour!
ProQuest provides Search Tips to assist in research with hints on searching for exact phrases, all words, all forms of a word, and directions on what to type in the search box.
Additional guidelines include searching for papers completed under supervision of a specific advisor, by author, by committee member, by department, by school, etc.
I tested it out with a general search term of “Christian Education” and limited the degree year to a range of 2016 to 2018. As you can see, there are 7,866 open access dissertations and theses found.
To narrow results and better refine your search, you can select the Refine Search link that shows up to the right of your Results page or you can select More Search Options on the search screen.
A sorting feature provides you the ability to see listings by relevancy, most recent, or oldest first.
If you don’t find what you need with PQDT Open and want to check out additional essays, check with your local public library — many libraries subscribe to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and make it available to you free of charge.