Second Call for Reader Feedback
HathiTrust publishes the HathiTrust Update newsletter 10 times a year to provide updates, build community, and spark conversation about how to engage with HathiTrust services, access the corpus for research, and help advance our shared mission. We want to hear from you on how well we are communicating the information that matters most to you and how we can do better.
Please take a few minutes to fill out a short reader survey.
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
We are pleased to announce that Clemson University and University of Auckland have joined the HathiTrust member community. See the full membership list on our website. University of Auckland’s membership is the first for a New Zealand institution.
New Program Steering Committee Members
The Executive Committee of the Board of Governors appointed Jessica Clemons and Carmelita Pickett to the Program Steering Committee (PSC) in December. Both will serve three-year terms beginning this month. Jessica Clemons is Associate University Librarian for Research, Education and Outreach at University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo). Carmelita Pickett is the AUL for Scholarly Resources and Content Strategy at University of Virginia. Clemons and Pickett are replacing Rebecca Lubas (previously of Claremont Colleges, now at Central Washington University) and Holly Mercer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville who has moved to a position on the Board of Governors.
Fee Model, Member Criteria Reminder and Voting Schedule
A reminder to all member representatives that HathiTrust has two proposals that require a vote of the membership. On Monday, February 4, we will send ballots and instructions to all representatives so that they may vote on proposal approval and implementation. The vote will conclude on February 22.
Executive Director Mike Furlough held four webcasts between November and mid-January to discuss these proposals with members. If you were unable to attend one of these sessions, a recording of his presentation, along with all information currently available about these two proposals, can be found online at: https://is.gd/HTproposals
Proposals 1 and 2
A formalized statement of our membership criteria. In these criteria we clarify that HathiTrust membership is available to libraries associated with not-for-profit organizations, that membership is available to international libraries, and more clearly delineate how state university systems may join and how their fees are assessed.
A modification to the formula we use to assess member fees. Under this proposal, members are assigned a tier based on their total library expenditures, and the public domain fee is assessed on a graduated scale according to the tier.
Members with questions about these proposals should contact Mike Furlough (see Staff page).
Comments Sought on Draft Metadata Sharing Policy
The Metadata Policy, Strategy, Use and Sharing Advisory Group (MUSAG) held a webinar for members on December 12, 2018, to present and discuss the draft HathiTrust Policy on Metadata Sharing and Use. You may view the webinar recording and the slides and speaker notes.
MUSAG invites your input via the comment form at https://goo.gl/forms/SIkKvTkBcH39mJk42 through January 31.
Now Available: 2018 Member Meeting Report
HathiTrust’s 2018 Member Meeting produced dozens of notes, ideas, and more than a chuckle or two as attendees donned green hats to celebrate HathiTrust’s 10th anniversary. Our work together was intensive, and as you can see in the final 2018 Member Meeting Report, worth the effort.
The Report includes the final priorities that attendees identified for understanding users and discovery, as well as the actions that HathiTrust is already taking to address these priorities and those that we’ll be looking towards in the future.
P.S. Thanks again to the 2018 Member Meeting Program Committee! If you are interested in learning more about this role or in joining the 2019 Member Meeting Program Committee to shape next year’s agenda, please contact Melissa Stewart at mmstewa@hathitrust.org.
Staff Changes
Welcome Eleanor Dickson Koehl, Digital Scholarship Librarian
Eleanor Dickson Koehl officially joined HathiTrust with an appointment at the University of Michigan Library as Digital Scholarship Librarian on December 17, 2018. Eleanor’s new assignment has her continuing to work as a part of the HathiTrust Research Center team, where she assumes the role of Associate Director for Outreach and Education.
Previously, as Digital Humanities Specialist within the HathiTrust Research Center team at the University of Illinois, Eleanor co-developed and -delivered, with Harriett Green, an instructional program on the topic of text mining content from the HathiTrust corpus, including an IMLS-funded curriculum to promote text mining skills in the library profession. Eleanor also served as chair of the HTRC Task Force on Non-consumptive Research Policy, which developed the 2017 policy enabling the non-consumptive research use of the entire HathiTrust corpus, including items held in copyright.
Working as a part of HathiTrust staff and the Research Center teams, Eleanor will help better serve HathiTrust members and facilitate new scholarship and teaching through activities aimed to expand use of text and data mining services. She will focus on expanding the curriculum developed during the IMLS grant, and deepen engagement with member librarians and scholars on text mining resources for the HathiTrust corpus. Please join us in welcoming Eleanor to her formal role within HathiTrust!
Farewell to Lizanne Payne
Friday January 11 was Lizanne Payne’s last day with HathiTrust. Lizanne joined HathiTrust in 2016 as its first Shared Print Program Officer. In Phase 1 (2016-2017), she and HathiTrust members secured retention commitments at 49 member libraries for more than 16 million print volumes to be retained through December 2042. In Phase 2, which began this spring, 60 member libraries have agreed to participate, including 31 new participants. She brought to HathiTrust a depth of knowledge from her previous experiences helping to launch the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST), the Eastern Academic Scholars Trust (EAST), and other regional shared print programs. The rapid success of HathiTrust's Shared Print Program is due to her expertise and instincts. Congratulations on your retirement, Lizanne!
Welcome Heather Weltin, New Shared Print Program Officer
As announced in the November newsletter, Heather Weltin became our new Shared Print Program Officer on January 7. Prior to joining HathiTrust, Heather was the Director of Collection Management and Resource Sharing for the General Library System (GLS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome, Heather!
From the Collection: 1923 Publications Now in Public Domain
Caption: J is for Jaguar, Woodcut
Title: ABC Book
Author and Artist: C.B. Falls
Published: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1923
Contributed to HathiTrust by University of Michigan (HathiTrust member since 2008)
This month, HathiTrust opened more than 50,000 items in the collection originally published in 1923. All of these are viewable in the U.S. and some globally. With thousands of contributions from member libraries, HathiTrust is uniquely positioned to increase public access to the 1923 items available in its digital repository and to preserve these items for access long into the future. See the complete 1923 collection and read more on Public Domain Day 2019.
Copyright Review Program
Here are December’s overall Copyright Review Program statistics:
CRMS-US Reviews: December 2018
Public Domain = 3,556 (76.3%)
All = 4,658
Overall
Public Domain Determinations = 260,440 (57.8%)
All Determinations = 450,907
CRMS-World: December 2018
Public Domain = 29 (52.7%)
All = 55
Overall
Public Domain Determinations = 160,719 (51.1%)
All Determinations = 314,643
Departing Members of the Copyright Review Team
The Copyright Review Program depends largely on in-kind staff time from our member libraries. These individuals enable HathiTrust’s commitment to make available as many items as possible that are in the public domain, not just on Public Domain Day, but continually.
Many thanks go to the following people who are completing their term on the Copyright Review team this year:
John Griffin, University of Florida (5,051 reviews, 4,925 public domain)
Maria Scheid, The Ohio State University (4,216 reviews, 3,664 public domain)
Sandra Cressman, University of Minnesota (4,233 reviews; 2,068 public domain)
Linda Frederiksen, Washington State University (1,609 reviews, 969 public domain)
Zach Coble, New York University (1,587 reviews, 1155 public domain)
Maryanne Alos, Amherst College (1,297 reviews, 799 public domain)
Ana Ramirez Luhrs, Lafayette College (1,192 reviews, 1,123 public domain)
Callie Holmes, UCLA (1,077 reviews, 689 public domain)
Daniel Biddle, New York University (914 reviews; 565 public domain)
Michelle Nair, Cornell University (571 reviews, 532 public domain)
Michelle Hubbell, Cornell University (326 reviews, 278 public domain)
Acacia Ramey, University of Florida (373 reviews, 243 public domain)
Thank you to the other 34 reviewers from 23 member institutions who will continue working as reviewers in 2019! See complete list of current and past Copyright Review participants.
Seeking New Copyright Reviewers for U.S. Monographs Project
HathiTrust is accepting nominations through February 8 for new copyright reviewers on the U.S. Monographs 1924-1963 project. Members of this group gain experience in copyright determinations on the review team with a one-year work commitment doing six hours a week of copyright review on U.S. monographic works in HathiTrust. No experience in copyright is necessary; HathiTrust provides training.
The nomination form is at https://goo.gl/forms/09IlSEwdilhcqruS2 and also posted on the Copyright Review Program web page. Self-nominations are invited with approval from the individual’s institution. The project will accept a limited number of new reviewers .
Visit the Copyright Review Program web page for background on the program’s history and current goals.
Featured copyright reviewer: Greg Nichols
Greg Nichols, Information Resources Specialist Senior, University of Michigan
Years working in a library: 29
HathiTrust start date: March 2008
Review statistics: 22,763 total reviews, 11,414 public domain determinations
“I started on the US core reviewing project before it was a grant back in 2007. We worked from spreadsheets of data and locally hosted images before the CRMS database was created. When the first IMLS grant was awarded back in 2008, I was part of the core team that developed the interface, wrote the initial documentation, and sweated over all the little things that need to occur in order to manage a database of copyright reviews. . . . We didn't model the CRMS after any existing database because well, none existed that we had access to. There were long days and lots of coffee but it was exciting and pioneering work.”
U.S. Federal Documents Program
The U.S. Federal Documents program ended 2018 on a high note, with 5,416 monographic items added to our collections in Q4 2018, with a total for the year of 217,813. We continued to make progress on projects with the metadata management team to better identify federal documents for end user access. Read more about our activities, including the 2018 year in review, in the January 2018 U.S. Federal Documents Program Update.
Shared Print Program
Phase 2 of the Shared Print Program is reaching its conclusion. Retention proposals for physical volumes corresponding to 1.2 million monograph titles in HathiTrust have been delivered to the ~60 libraries participating in Phase 2. These retention proposals represent titles that were not committed for retention in Phase 1 and were produced by OCLC Sustainable Collection Services to reflect two recommendations made by the Retention Models Working Group:
Retain up to 5 copies of each title and
Distribute the retention commitments geographically across North America.
Phase 2 Retention Libraries have been asked to confirm their commitments by the end of February 2019. The actual number of final Phase 2 commitments (volumes) will depend on the decisions made by the Retention Libraries.
In the News, Publications, and Research
Presentations
In October, several presentations at the 2018 Federal Depository Library Conference featured HathiTrust’s federal documents collection. Heather Christenson presented on how the HathiTrust Fed Docs Program supports our members as part of a panel, The University of California’s Federal Documents Archive: 5 Years and 200,000+ Documents Later (slides). Another presentation, Digging Deeper into Government Information: An Introduction to Text Mining (slides), was given by Eleanor Koehl of the HathiTrust Research Center, and Valerie Glenn, previously of HathiTrust. Both were standing room only, with engaged audiences and thoughtful questions.
News
Fleishman, Glenn. “For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain.” Smithsonian. January 2019. Web.
Executive Director Mike Furlough contributes to the conversation.
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
Jan. 24-27: American Library Association Midwinter Conference, Seattle, WA: Mike Furlough, Heather Weltin
News or Research to Share?
If you or a patron at your institution has news to share regarding a publication, presentation, grant, or research underway related to HathiTrust, we’d love to hear about it. Please share with Jessica Rohr, member engagement and communications specialist, at jbelle@hathitrust.org.