Dear Mr. Mudd, I was won­der­ing what is the most popular/most requested senior the­sis in the Uni­ver­sity Archives collection?

This is a peren­nial ques­tion and the short answer is that with the excep­tion of celebrity alumni the­ses, there are few the­ses that are pulled with any reg­u­lar­ity, yet the col­lec­tion as a whole (total­ing over 60,000 the­ses) is our most used col­lec­tion within the Uni­ver­sity Archives. Last year over 1,000 the­ses were viewed by visitors–mostly Prince­ton undergraduates–to the Mudd Library, which accounted for about 1/4 of all Archives mate­ri­als circulated.

Wendy Kopp’s the­sis is always among those requested by remote researchers–that is, those who do not visit the library in per­son, and when­ever a Prince­ton­ian makes news or is on a hit show, their the­sis is often requested.

In the past, this included Went­worth Miller III (when Prison Break was a hit), David Duchovny (for the X Files) and Dean Cain (Adven­tures of Lois and Clark), as well as all three now sit­ting Supreme Court Jus­tices: Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor.

The entire the­ses col­lec­tion can be searched via this data­base, and Archives staff are work­ing to make future senior the­ses avail­able online to the Prince­ton com­mu­nity start­ing in 2013.