We are sure your advisor recommended you to find and analyze past dissertation projects devoted to your field of research before getting down to work on own dissertation. It is a really good starting point, because you get a chance to:

1. see how the whole project will look like;
2. come up with good ideas for own research;
3. come across useful sources, etc.

Yet, do you know how to find dissertations? Where do you plan to get necessary examples and past projects? One should possess good searching skills to find dissertations that can be used for own research purposes.
 
If you are not sure how to find dissertations, let us explain you the main searching strategies. As you can guess, nowadays Internet technologies make it possible to find almost any information, and you should be ready to plunge into boundless world of Internet.
 
So, here are the main principles of finding dissertations online.

• You may start finding dissertations in your library. All projects completed in your institution are stored there. With the help of a librarian, you can also find dissertations (in your field of research) prepared in other institutions and stored in their libraries.
• There are many online thesis and dissertation databases, where you can also find useful projects. However, you should know that some databases provide just dissertation abstracts, which means you will be able to read only a brief summary of the main problem, dissertation findings, etc. Other databases provide full-text dissertations. We recommend you not to waste time and go straight to the ProQuest dissertation database.

• You may use such services as WorldCat to find dissertations. It is a huge catalog of various library catalogs from all over the world.
• One more option you can use is finding dissertations published as books or particular dissertation chapters published as articles in scientific journals.

Good luck!