LIBR 299. Thesis
Students may satisfy the University's requirement for a Master's degree by either completing a thesis or an e-Portfolio. The thesis option (referred to as Plan A in the Graduate Admissions and Program Evaluations guidelines and the University Catalog) is designed to provide an opportunity for those who genuinely enjoy both the discovery of new knowledge and the development of a thoughtfully drafted composition that communicates that knowledge to the information profession.
A SLIS thesis must be scholarly research on a topic of significance. The completion of a thesis is a major undertaking. It represents an organized research effort, where the student makes an original contribution to the field. It may take as many as two or more years, although most theses require about a year to complete.
The SLIS thesis typically involves the following steps:
- A student develops a thesis proposal in LIBR 285, with possible additional work done afterward, under the Thesis Chair's supervision, for one additional credit unit of LIBR 298. Please note: the Office of Graduate Studies and Research does not provide thesis proposal guidelines. Students are responsible for developing the thesis proposal on their own, under the direction of the Thesis Chair and before finding other members of the Thesis Committee.
- The student forms a thesis committee.
- The student conducts the investigation and gathering of data/materials/evidence.
- The student writes the thesis, and gets it reviewed and approved by their thesis committee.
- The student conducts the investigation and gathering of data/materials/evidence.
The thesis will not only be reviewed by your thesis committee for content but will also be reviewed by the Office of Graduate Studies and Research for acceptable university thesis requirements. Because of this, the process for completing and submitting a thesis is an intensive one that requires students to follow strict deadlines and requirements.
IMPORTANT: For current University Thesis guidelines, detailed instructions on how, where, and when to submit the thesis, as well as general contact information regarding thesis-related questions, please visit the Office of Graduate Studies and Research website.
It is essential that the University procedures and timelines detailed on the Office of Graduate Studies and Research website be strictly followed.
Thesis Workshop
To help familiarize students with the thesis review process and the SJSU requirements, and to answer students' questions, the Office of Graduate Studies and Research offers a thesis workshop at SJSU in the Fall and Spring semesters. For a schedule see the SJSU Office of Graduate Studies and Research Thesis Workshops and Annoucements page
If you are unable to attend you may also download the PowerPoint presentation: Steps to Completing Your Master's Thesis [PPT].
Use of Human Subjects in Research and IRB
If your thesis includes data obtained from human subjects (experiments, surveys, interviews, etc.), you must get approval from the SJSU Human Subjects Institutional Review Board. Information concerning the use of human subjects is available on the SJSU IRB webpage.
Watch a video introduction to the Institutional Review Board. The following video explains the steps: SJSU Institutional Review Board.
SLIS Procedures
In addition to all the requirements and timelines detailed on the Graduate Studies and Research thesis pages, the student must follow the School's procedures, outlined below.
- Students wishing to undertake the development of a thesis must have completed the course LIBR 285 - Research Methods in Library and Information Science. (This requirement may be waived, with the School's Coordinator of Admissions and Academic Advising's approval of a petition, if a student has taken a research methods course and completed a thesis or dissertation prior to his or her admission into the SJSU SLIS program.)
- The student must identify a faculty member to be the Thesis Chair and secure the faculty member's agreement to serve in that role. The Thesis Chair must be a tenured or tenure-track fulltime faculty member of the School.
- The student must have a fully developed thesis research proposal in place, with a solid literature review and a timetable of research implementation (developed under the direction of their Thesis Chair), before attempting to form a complete Thesis Committee.
- Once the Thesis Chair has been selected and the proposal developed, the student identifies and forms the rest of the Thesis Committee. The committee consists of at least three people (including the Thesis Chair). One of the three must be a tenured fulltime faculty member of the School, a second must be a tenured or a tenure-track fulltime faculty member of the School. The third member may be a faculty member of the School, from another department or university, or a member of the information profession.
The committee's responsibilities are to advise the student regarding research design and methodology, to read drafts of the manuscript, and to eventually approve and sign off on the completed thesis. - Once the committee has been assembled, the student will seek approval of the thesis proposal from the Thesis Committee. The student should expect to revise the proposal, perhaps several times. All suggested revisions of the proposal must be completed to the Committee's satisfaction before approval of the proposal can be granted.
- When the Thesis Committee has approved the proposal, the student is required to file the School's Thesis Form. The SLIS Thesis Form must be submitted through Angel.
Fill out the Thesis Form [PDF] online and save it to your computer for uploading to ANGEL.
To Submit:
- Log in to your ANGEL account.
- Click on Find a Course.
- In Keyword Search box type: Thesis.
- Enroll in this site; no PIN required.
- Follow the instructions in the Forms Drop Boxes tab to upload your Thesis Form file to SLIS.
- In the semester immediately following the filing of the Thesis Form, the student will enroll in LIBR 299 Thesis, for 3 semester units, to carry out the proposed research and to write the thesis. To enroll in LIBR 299, the student must first obtain a permission number from the Chair of their Thesis Committee. Only one semester of enrollment is required, although the student may work on the thesis for more than one semester. A maximum of 6 semester units for LIBR 299 is possible.
- The student presents the thesis draft to the Thesis Chair for initial review, with the other committee members reading the draft only after the Thesis Chair's screening. The student should not attempt to submit a finished document before the Thesis Chair and other committee members have had an opportunity to evaluate the work. The student is advised to present each section of the thesis draft to the Thesis Chair as it is completed, instead of submitting the whole thesis draft in one bundle.
- If committee members have concerns about any segment of the draft, it is expected that those concerns will be clearly communicated to the student in a timely fashion. The student should expect that revisions will be required.
- Once all committee members have approved the content of the thesis draft, the draft must be prepared in accordance with Graduate Studies and Research's requirements of style and format, by following its style sheet for manuscript preparation.
- At this point, the final thesis draft must be submitted to the Thesis Chair for final checking for consistency in formatting and style, and once it is approved by the Thesis Chair, the candidate must follow the submission procedures on the Graduate Studies and Research thesis web pages.
- It is the student's responsibility to follow the procedures and guidelines detailed on Graduate Studies and Research thesis web pages, and to know the deadline dates and observe them by submitting the thesis, in acceptable format, by the appointed time, and to the appointed place.
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