January 2017 Update

 

New Members Join HathiTrust in January

We are very happy to announce the newest members of HathiTrust:

• Dickinson College

• Southern Methodist University

• Texas Christian University

This brings total membership in HathiTrust to 123.

New Member Webcasts in February

We will be hosting two identical webcasts in February to orient new members.  Topics that will be covered include: how we work, what we've collected, the role of members, and current initiatives. The first session will be held on Wednesday, February 15, at 4:00 p.m. EST, and the second session will be held on Thursday, February 23, at 11:00 a.m. EST.  All members are welcome to attend.

Reflections on 2016 Member Meeting

Executive Director Mike Furlough sent a message to member representatives on December 20 reflecting on 2016, particularly the Member Meeting we held in Chicago on November 10.  We’ve already begun making plans for next year’s Member Meeting and will announce dates and location by the spring.  You can read the message here.

CRMS-World Project is Completed

As of the end of December, we completed copyright review on all titles in the CRMS-World project. During the course of the project reviewers investigated 307,594 volumes published in the UK, Canada, and Australia. 156,074 (50.7%) of these were found to be in the public domain.  Work began on US state government documents 1923-1977 in December, and later in January we will begin working on US monographs from 1923-1963.  More about our copyright review projects can be found here:  https://www.hathitrust.org/copyright-review.

HTRC Extracted Features Dataset

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) announced availability of the Extracted Features Dataset on December 5, 2016. This dataset opens the complete HathiTrust collection for investigations into historical and cultural trends, the rise and fall of topics within the corpus, and the evolution of words and writing structures in publications dating from the 16th to the late 20th century.  Read more at https://www.hathitrust.org/extracted-features-announcement.

Metadata Policy group

The Metadata Strategy, Policy, Use, and Sharing Advisory Group (MUSAG) has started the Metadata Policy subgroup. Under the leadership of Patti Martin from the California Digital Library at the University of California, the subgroup will establish principles for metadata sharing by HathiTrust and develop a formal policy to clarify the conditions under which HathiTrust metadata may be shared and re‐used. The group is also likely to take on other tasks related to efficient management and strategic deployment of metadata across HathiTrust initiatives, as part of the broader MUSAG charge. Members of the subgroup include:

• Patti Martin, California Digital Library at the University of California (chair)

• Tim Cole, University of Illinois

• Sandra McIntyre, HathiTrust Services and Operations

• John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania

• Kathryn Stine, California Digital Library at the University of California

Digital Object Quality Corrections group

The User Support Working Group has expanded to include a new group, the Digital Objects Quality Corrections Group. This group is focused on responding to user feedback and working with stakeholders to improve the quality of digital objects in the HathiTrust collection. Previously, this work was handled solely by one individual, Kat Hagedorn, Director of Digital Content and Collections at the University of Michigan, but the number of requests we receive has become unsustainable for one person to manage. In anticipation of this new group, we did significant work documenting processes and instructions as well as improving workflows.

New members of this group include:

• Constance M. Wade, University of Iowa

• Bethany Davis, University of Iowa

• Keila Zayas-Ruiz, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

We welcome additional nominations for this group, which can be submitted at  https://goo.gl/forms/CECQC1RNG9w6xM163. The charge of the User Support Working Group can be viewed at https://www.hathitrust.org/wg_user-support_charge .

HathiTrust U.S. Federal Government Documents Program in Print

Program Officer Heather Christenson authored a recent “From the Field” update in the Journal of Collaborative Librarianship, describing HathiTrust’s current goals, activities, and plans for building and enhancing our federal documents collection.

The Future of the Print Record Working Group

Mike Furlough is a member of a multi-organizational group called the Future of the Print Record Working Group.  A new white paper from the working group, Concerted Thought, Collaborative Action, and the Future of the Print Record, has just been released and comments are open until the end of January. We will be writing more about the HathiTrust Shared Print Program and the future of print in January.

Hathitrust on the Road

HathiTrust staff will be attending the following events January and February 2017.  Please contact us if you wish to meet us at any of these events:

• ALA Midwinter Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 20-24, 2017 - Mike Furlough, Heather Christenson,  Valerie Glenn, Lizanne Payne.