ETDs contain precious information – state-of-the-art bibliographic reviews. Graduate students starting their research can browse the references and learn about important works in their areas of interest. At the same time, references can be viewed from a different stand point – as holders of information on: - Relations there exist among ETDs and other works of their authors, their advisors and other faculty; - Types of works and languages they are written in; - Different profiles of types of works and languages among the disciplines; - Evolution of types and languages as time goes by, in general and for different disciplines. This addresses the first part of a project in progress focusing the contents of references in ETDs. The project has the objectives of: (1) Identifying ETDs that are references in ETDs and trying to establish a measure analogous to the impact factor; (2) Mapping endogeny in graduate programs; (3) Analyzing the evolution of reference types from traditional (paper) to online works. In order to fulfill the objectives, a set of tools was developed. They are devoted to ETDs and not to theses and dissertations in general because they are applied to digital files; the reason is operational.