Abstract-We construct new MDS or near-MDS self-dual codes over large finite fields. In particular we show that there exists a Euclidean self-dual MDS code of length n = q over GF (q) whenever q = 2 m (m ≥ 2) using a Reed-Solomon (RS) code and its extension. It turns out that this MDS self-dual code is an extended duadic code. We construct Euclidean self-dual near-MDS codes of length n = q − 1 over GF (q) from RS codes when q ≡ 1 (mod 4) and q ≤ 113. We also construct many new MDS self-dual codes over GF (p) of length 16 for primes 29 ≤ p ≤ 113. Finally we construct Euclidean/Hermitian self-dual MDS codes of lengths up to 14 over GF (q 2 ) where q = 19, 23, 25, 27, 29.