Until recently theses and dissertations (Masters and PhD) were only available in printed form. Now, worldwide, institutions are digitising their collections putting these resources into the public domain. See the centre column for information about UKZN's digitising project and the right hand column for access to national and international resources.
The Proquest collection of databases incorporates an international thesis collection for several disciplines. Most are not full text although the first 24 pages are often available.
Denise Nicholson of Wits Library has put together a useful guide of those South African institutions digitising academic materials inclusive of theses as well as a list of some international collections
Google and Google Scholar will also list theses in results.
1. All theses are listed on the UKZN Institutional Respository, ResearchSpace and a link to the full text is available.
2. The digitised theses are also available via the UKZN Library website and a thesis can be searched for via author, title and community. It is best to access ResearchSpace via Firefox.
3. ResearchSpace also provides links to sites that deal with publisher copyright policies.
4. Theses can also be traced via Google.