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Archive + Share Your Thesis

  • The Libraries maintain an online repository of student theses by Swarthmore students, as well as Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College students who majored at Swarthmore in Tri-College programs, such as Linguistics.
  • By default, this collection is available only to current Swarthmore students, faculty, and staff, and in-person visitors to the Libraries, unless the author has granted permission for broader access.

Access and Permissions

All students must complete a release form to archive their thesis with the Libraries. You will be able to choose from the following access options:

Publicly available with a Creative Commons license of your choice

Information about your thesis and the option to download the full text will appear on Google Scholar. Readers may resuse your work according to the terms of the license you select. Creative Commons has a tool available to help you choose which license best suits your needs.

Publicly available, all rights reserved

Information about your thesis and the option to download the full text will appear on Google Scholar. Readers may access your work for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, permission must be granted by you as the copyright holder.

Available only to the Swarthmore community of current students, faculty, and staff

Information about your thesis will appear on Google Scholar, but readers will not have the option to download the full text unless they are Swarthmore-authenticated users. Visitors to campus may view theses in our Special Collections Reading Room in person without the ability to copy, download, or upload the file. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, permission must be granted by you as the copyright holder.

You may choose to delay access to your thesis until a future date of your choice under any of these options. If you choose to delay access, information about your thesis will appear on Google Scholar, but the full text will not be available to download until the end of the embargo. Regardless of the access level chosen, you retain copyright to your thesis.

You may also choose to decline to archive your thesis.

  • Contact your thesis advisor, or myworks@swarthmore.edu with questions.
  • Alumni may request the addition of their thesis, a change in access permissions, or the removal of their thesis by contacting records@swarthmore.edu.

Name Change Policy

Swarthmore College Libraries are committed to providing an inclusive community for students, faculty, staff, and the public. We respect eavery individual's right to be represented as they choose and we are working to ensure that our collections reflect the preferred names of our community members. We are glad to offer the opportunity to revise existing records in our collections to reflect your chosen name. To request that the libraries update your name in our collections, please contact records@swarthmore.edu.

Visitor Access

For theses that are not publicly available, visitors are allowed to access print and digitized theses in the Special Collections Reading Room on Swarthmore College's campus. Copying, printing, and distribution of these materials are not permitted and will be prohibited via software and hardware on the reading room computer. Theses that are not publicly availabe are excluded from our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services.