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. Many dissertations completed before 2009 have to be digitized first before they can be made available.
Since the first linguistics PhD was awarded in 1949, more than 400 linguistics dissertations have been produced by U-M linguistics students, and we would be delighted if all of this research can be made publicly available. A list of linguistics dissertations completed up to 2012 is available here. Most linguistics dissertations are also included in U-M's online repository of dissertations and theses.
Once you have located your dissertation one one of these two lists, you can confirm whether it is available in open-access digital format, or whether it requires U-M login credentials to access. If access to your dissertation is restricted, 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.
