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[ameliadavies]

I was wondering if anyone can help me...

I am desperately trying to access a thesis via proquest but it seems there is no way of downloading it without paying around $42 which seems very expensive as I'm not even sure yet how useful it would be.

I have been told that the British library stopped subscribing to the service in 2000 so have been unable to access it there.

A search of worldcat.org revealed that it is only accessible in Florida which is not helpful to me as I am currently in the UK.

Does anyone know of a way I can access the document without paying a huge fee to download it?? I have run out of ideas and need any help anyone can offer.

[mouseman]

Try contacting the author and see if she/he has an electronic copy that they would be willing to share.

[dellaroux]

I was able to get one for a colleague overseas because I knew the student's instructor.

I had only asked for the title so I could search for it, and they sent me a copy of the whole paper.

That's not always going to happen, as a case of generosity and collegiality, but the student's former advisor might be another avenue to try if you have trouble finding the student, or if you do and mouseman's suggestion (which I'd go for first as well) didn't work out.

[ameliadavies]

Thank you for your replies I will look into it further and hopefully find a way to contact the author.

[collegekidsmom]

Be sure to check Google in case the thesis has been digitized in the uni's ETD(Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Why can't interlibrary loan order it from the Florida locations? Lastly, are you near a public access library(or have a friend at one) that has a subscription to the free versions of theses in the Proquest index? Subscriptions to the index at many research universities come with free access to the PDFs of the dissertations.
 It may be that ILL is your best option-either to send the whole dissertation if paper, or to copy sections.

[dellaroux]

Right, I totally forgot about ILL, our large public library can get theses by ILL if the person ordering has no university ties, a different friend used that system a couple years ago, in a different situation.

If you have a friend stateside who would be willing to mail it to you, that would be possible, then. The library didn't want the ILL copy back, as I recall, so my other friend got to keep it, too.