Many dissertations are available online. If not online, they can usually be borrowed through interlibrary loan. WMU music theses may be located using the library catalog, or you may browse them at call numbers M9999, ML9999, and MT9999.
Indexes virtually all doctoral dissertations and many masters theses produced in the U.S. since 1861. Dissertations from other countries date back to 1637. Abstracts available from 1980. Full-text for dissertations are being added continually. Most since 1997 are full-text, though some authors choose not to make their work available. Print and microfilm copies are offered for a fee, but request the item via Interlibrary Loan before paying for a copy.
New search functionality includes metadata from Clarivate's Citation Connection. To ensure your search results take advantage of this new functionality, please add “AND ref(1)“ to your search terms.
To search only dissertations and theses completed at Western Michigan University, please use the Dissertations & Theses @ Western Michigan University database. To view digital theses and dissertations hosted in the WMU Libraries repository, please visit ScholarWorks@WMU.
The online-catalogue offered here contains around 700,000 references almost exclusively to music manuscripts. These records pass on to posterity the works of some 25,000 composers. The sources are preserved in the libraries and archives of 32 countries.
Millions of pages in twelve major collections. Includes the British Home Office Papers and Records from 1783-1894; documents and records of the United States 19th century involvement with China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines; full-text of Corvey's archive of 9,500 English, French and German Romantic-era texts; British 19th century scores, scripts, playbills; journals and monographs which track the connection between major episodes in the hard and social sciences; photographs from Britain, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas on many key areas of research.
Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange
Features primary source collections related to international relations between Asian countries and the West during the 19th century. Including government reports, diplomatic correspondences, periodicals, newspapers, treaties, trade agreements, NGO papers, and more.
British Politics and Society
Includes papers of British statesmen, Home Office records, ordnance surveys, working class autobiographies, and other unique collections.
British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture
Features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the long nineteenth century, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. These rare documents, many of them never before available, are sourced from the British Library and other institutions.
Children's Literature and Childhood
Contains material from archives as well as university, public, and national libraries. Collections from the UK National Archives feature sources on child welfare and reform, education, juvenile health, and juvenile crime and detention; documents sourced from the British Library include monographs related to education as well as fiction and periodicals for children; the materials from the American Antiquarian Society include educational texts, reports on child welfare, and children's literature from various immigrant communities in the United States.
Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest
Delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.
European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection
Includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The Corvey Collection comprises one of the most important archives of Romantic era writing in existence anywhere--including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more--with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.
Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature
Contains material from seven source libraries in the United States, England, and Canada.
Photography: The World Through the Lens
Assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically-illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe. Some images are well-known while many have rarely been viewed.
Religion, Reform, and Society
Contains material from a wealth of source libraries, including the Congregational Library & Archives in Boston, Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Historical Society, World Microfilms, and six other libraries.
Science, Technology and Medicine, 1780-1925
The rise of secular culture, the transportation and information revolution, the competition for empire, modern warfare, and modern notions of the self and the body are all topics with links to “pure science.” Science, Technology and Medicine, 1780-1925 helps researchers place science, along with medicine and technology, in the mainstream of historical study.
Women: Transnational Networks
Focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late 18th century to the era of suffrage in the early 20th century, all through a transnational perspective. The collection contains deep information on European and North American movements, but also expands its scope to include collections from other regions.
Histories of music are shelved at these call numbers:
Books on musicology and ethnomusicology are at ML 3797-3799.
Selected resources: