Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

Looking for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs)...? 

Then look no further than The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). They have created a catalog that gives access to ETDs from all over the world.

Search tools developed for the NDLTD Union Catalog.
Use the following to search for authors, keywords, subjects, institutions etc:

Scirus ETD Search
A comprehensive scientific research tool from Elsevier, Scirus ETD Search provides an advanced search that can narrow results to theses and dissertations as well as provide access to related scholarly resources.

VTLS Visualizer
This is a dynamic search and discovery platform with sophisticated functionality.  You can sort by relevance, title, and date.  In the current implementation, faceted searches are available by language, continent, country, date, format and source institution.  Additional facets, such as subjects or departments, can be added if desired.

Other useful ETD search tools:
ADT (Australiasian Digital Theses Program)
This search portal provides searching, browsing, and access to ETDs produced in Australia.

Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertacoes
A search tool for accessing ETDs produced in Brazilian universities.

Cybertesis
A portal developed jointly by the University of Chile, the Universites de Lyon, Montreal, and Alexandrie, and the University of Geneva for accessing full text ETDs from many countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and the United States.

DART-Europe E-theses Portal
A discovery service for open access research theses awarded by European universities.
Deusche National Bibliothek
Dissertations since 1998 are available via search in the German National Library.

DiVA
This portal provides access to ETDs and research publications written at 26 institutions in Scandinavia.

EThOS
Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) offers free access, in a secure format, to the full text of electronically stored UK theses--a rich and vast body of knowledge.

NARCIS
This search portal provides access to ETDs produced in the Netherlands, as well as access to a variety of other research and data sets.

National ETD Portal (South Africa)
This search portal provides access to ETDs produced in South Africa.

RCAAP - Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal
The RCAAP's mission is to promote, support and facilitate the adoption of the open access movement in Portugal. RCAAP The project aims to: increase the visibility, accessibility and dissemination
of academic activity and Portuguese scientificresearch, facilitating the management and access to information about scientific production and integrate Portugal into a set of international initiatives.  This portal offers a union catalog with digital contents from more than 30 institutions.

Theses Canada
A union catalog of Canadian theses and dissertations, in both electronic and analog formats, is available through the search interface on this portal.

DSC South Asian Literature Festival 7-24 Oct

The 7th of October sees the opening of the UK’s major literature festival showcasing the rich and varied cultures of the South Asia*

The DSC South Asian Literature Festival offers a unique platform for South Asian* storytelling, combining the written word with rich imagery, film, music, performance and art across two weeks in October. The Festival aims to generate interest and discussion about the themes and literary heritage of the subcontinent, reach out to new audiences across the UK, and present an unmatched platform for established and emerging voices alike.

The DSC South Asian Literature Festival 2011 offers a unique platform for South Asian storytelling, combining the written word with rich imagery, film, music, performance and art across three weeks in October. More than 80 speakers and artists will feature in 50 events across the capital and in selected UK cities, with a programme of events designed to stimulate, challenge, and engage audiences with some of the best-established and emerging voices in South Asian literature.

To view the full programme click here.

*Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

For updates, follow the festival on facebook and twitter

Rajesh Rao: A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script

At TED 2011 Rajesh Rao tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to read the Indus language.

Some more information about his work from the Guardian's Grrlscientist blog here. 

Google Translate now supports 5 Indic languages

Google Translate has improved a lot in the past 3 years and it's now the most powerful machine translation service that's available for free. Google Translate is the only machine translation service which supports languages that have less than one million speakers (Maltese, Welsh) and languages that are underrepresented on the Web (Galician).

Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate and they're some of the most popular languages in the world, with more than 600 million speakers: Bengali (300 million speakers), Gujarati (46 million), Kannada (51 million), Tamil (65 million), Telugu (130 million).

"Beginning today, you can explore the linguistic diversity of the Indian sub-continent with Google Translate, which now supports five new experimental alpha languages. (...) You can expect translations for these new alpha languages to be less fluent and include many more untranslated words than some of our more mature languages—like Spanish or Chinese — which have much more of the web content that powers our statistical machine translation approach. (...) Since these languages each have their own unique scripts, we've enabled a transliterated input method for those of you without Indian language keyboards," informs Google.


( Via:  http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/ )

World Atlas of Language Structures

World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)

The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of 55 authors (many of them the leading authorities on the subject).

The first version of WALS was published as a book with CD-ROM in 2005 by Oxford University Press. The first online version was published in April 2008. Both are superseeded by the current online version, published in April 2011.

WALS Online is a joint effort of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Digital Library. It is a separate publication, edited by Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, 2011) ISBN: 978-3-9813099-1-1. The main programmer is Robert Forkel.

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Via: AWOL - The Ancient World Online (Charles Ellwood Jones) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

BBC World Service cuts

Today the BBC has announced significant cuts to its World Service. 

They will be cutting at least 600 jobs, closing foreign-language services and scaling back many other programs and operations. The language services being closed are Albanian; Macedonian; Serbian; Portuguese output for Africa; and an English-language service tailored to the Caribbean. Ominously, a reduction of programmes in another seven languages is also set to be announced later. The Chinese service will also be scaled back and reoriented towards a younger audience outside China.

Quoted in the Financial Times, Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster said “A huge amount of soft power accrues from the World Service, a fact which these savage cuts suggest is simply being ignored.” and.... “To shut down services in such important regions is not just contrary to the interests of the listeners who are being stripped of services that they value, it is also contrary to Britain’s own interests.”

Barker, A. and Bintliff, E. (2011) World Service plans to shed 500 jobs. Financial Times, [online] 25 Jan. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8281920/BBC-World-Service-to-lose-600-jobs.html (Accessed 26 Jan 2011)

BBC News, entertainment and arts. (2011) BBC World Service cuts to be outlined to staff [online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12283356 (Accessed 26 Jan 2011)

Plunkett, J. (2011) BBC World Service to 'cut up to 650 jobs The Guardian [online] 26 Jan. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/25/bbc-world-service-jobs (Accessed 26 Jan 2011)

Aspects of Japanese cinema - the directorspective: Akira Kurosawa @ Barbican

In December, the Barbican Film's Directorspective strand presents a selection of the greatest films by legendary Japanese master filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa. Curated by Japanese film expert Helen McCarthy, this season demonstrates the master filmmaker’s thrilling artistry and marks the centenary of Kurosawa’s birth.

Friday 3 December

6.00 pm – Throne Of Blood (Kumonosu jo) (12A) (Japan 1957 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 109 min) introduced by season curator Helen McCarthy

8.30pm – Rashomon (12A) (Japan 1950 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 87 min) presented on a newly restored digital print

Wednesday 8 December

6.00pm – Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi) (PG) (Japan 1948 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 98 min)

8.30pm – The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin) (PG) (Japan 1958 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 139 min)

Thursday 9 December

7.00 pm – Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior) (PG) (Japan 1980 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 181 min)

Sunday 19 December

2.30pm – Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) (PG) (Japan 1954 Dir. Akira Kurosawa 207 min) with one interval

For more information, see the Barbican's season page.