This initiative is part of U-M's celebration of 150 years of graduate education, and has the ultimate goal of making all U-M dissertations, from the first completed in 1876 to the most recent, available and accessible to researchers everywhere. After 2009, all dissertations have been submitted in digital format which makes it easier to unlock these dissertations, although even some post-2009 dissertations are "locked" if that was requested by the student at the time of dissertation completion. Dissertations completed before 2009 have to be digitized first before they can be made available.
Linguistics graduate students have been reporting first-rate research in their dissertations for many decades, and we would be delighted if all of this research can be made available. We encourage all of our alumni to look up their dissertations in the U-M's online repository of dissertations and theses. If you cannot locate your dissertation, it is likely that you completed your dissertation before digital submission became common in 2009. To request that your dissertation be digitized, you can contact the U-M Library at <deepblue@umich.edu>.
Even if you can find your dissertation in the online repository, it does not necessarily mean that the dissertation is publicly available. Once you have accessed your dissertation's record, look for the "Files" section on the left side of the screen. If you see the phrase "Access Restricted", your dissertation, though already in digital format, is not publicly available. To request that it be opened for access, you can fill out the request form here, selecting “Changes to my Work” > “I want to make my work publicly available" option, and then follow the instructions given.
To read more about the intiative, please follow this link to Rackham Graduate School.
