Last year, we looked at use of our digitized theses. We decided that a bit more than a year had passed so it was time to look at these items again.
The collection has grown modestly to 258 theses and dissertations. These PDFs have been downloaded almost 55,000 times total (an average of 213.2 times each), from 12 November 2009 (when we first posted a digitized thesis) to 31 October 2015. On average, each digitized thesis is downloaded once every four days, an increase from last year. Our digitized theses date from 1886–2008, with the vast majority dating from 1912–1921.
Each thesis or dissertation that has been downloaded at least ten times shows a count of downloads on the individual page in Iowa Research Online (IRO). This download count appears in all our collections in IRO.
The following items, from a variety of disciplines, have been downloaded more than 1000 times each. These high use items are by graduates from as early as 1913 and to as recently as 2008.
| Graduation Year |
Title |
Author |
Degree |
Use/Day |
Total Downloads |
| 1961 |
The Production book of “The Diary of Anne Frank” |
Allan Kurtz Longacre II |
Master of Arts, Speech and Dramatic Arts |
3.73 |
5,794 |
| 2008 |
Teacher-initiated talk and student oral discourse in a second language literature classroom : a sociocultural analysis |
Joshua J. Thoms |
Doctor of Philosophy, Second Language Acquisition |
5.39 |
4,387 |
| 1949 |
A formal analysis of Hawthorne’s The Blithedale romance |
Lewis Dwight Levang |
Master of Arts, English |
3.24 |
2,099 |
| 1931 |
The catenary |
J. P. Kacmarynski |
Master of Science, Mathematics |
1.72 |
2,068 |
| 1999 |
Development of a method for the simultaneous detection of mycotoxins in corn using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and electrospray-atmospheric pressure ionization/mass spectrometry (ES-API/MS) for extraction, separation, and identification |
Jenelle Daria Brown |
Master of Science, Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health |
1.44 |
1,791 |
| 1956 |
Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis (Rome, 1650) : the section on musical instruments |
Frederick Baron Crane |
Master of Arts, Music |
3.14 |
1,628 |
| 1914 |
Morphology of Cannabis sativa L |
Joyce Reed |
Master of Science |
1.81 |
1,203 |
| 1955 |
Construction and application of a mechanical differential analyzer |
Joseph Emil Kasper |
Master of Science, Physics |
1.08 |
1,190 |
| 1913 |
Ore deposits produced by magmatic segregation, with special reference to the nickel ores of the Sudbury district, Ontario |
Stuart St.Clair |
Master of Science, Geology |
1.24 |
1,113 |
| 1937 |
A study of the origin and development of the educational excursion and field trip |
Harriet A. Woods |
Master of Arts, Education |
1.58 |
1,113 |
If you are interested in having your thesis digitized and added to our open access collection, please let us know by submitting this permission form (PDF).
