Top News
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
We are very pleased to announce Elon University and University of Nevada, Reno have joined the HathiTrust member community. See our full membership list on our website.
Board of Governors June Meeting Summary
The Board of Governors held its spring meeting on June 7 at the Big Ten Conference Center near Chicago. The official business included the following actions and discussions:
Appointed four new members to the Program Steering Committee (see below)
Approved the 2018 Board election schedule and process
Discussed planning for the HathiTrust Research Center for 2019–2023
Discussed criteria for HathiTrust membership
Discussed a preliminary budget outline highlighting the strategic plan
The next Board of Governors meeting will take place on August 29 by video conference.
Board of Governors Nominations Open July 23
Monday, July 23, HathiTrust will begin accepting nominations for candidates for the 2019 Board of Governors. Review the official notice of the 2018 election process, which includes detailed instructions for nominations and requirements of nominees.
2018 Nominating Committee:
Wendy Lougee, University of Minnesota (chair)
Trevor Dawes, University of Delaware
Terri Fishel, Macalester College
Damon Jaggars, The Ohio State University
Diane Walker, University of Notre Dame
New Program Steering Committee Appointees for 2018–2021
The Board of Governors approved the appointment of the following four candidates to serve on the Program Steering Committee (PSC) for three years, beginning July 2018:
Maria Estorino, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Anne Houston, Dean of Libraries, Lafayette College
Holly Mercer, Associate Dean for Research, Collections & Scholarly Communications, University of Tennessee
Evviva Weinraub, Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies, Northwestern University
HathiTrust thanks departing PSC members: Greg Raschke, North Carolina State University; Robert McDonald, Indiana University; Oya Rieger, Cornell University; Erik Mitchell, University of California, Berkeley. A special thank you to John Butler, University of Minnesota, who served on the Program Steering Committee from July 2013 to June 2018, the final two years of it as PSC Chair. Karla Strieb, The Ohio State University, will serve as PSC Chair until 2020.
Current Activities
Last Call to Submit Annual Print Holdings Updates
The annual call for updated print holdings officially concluded June 30, 2018. If your institution has already submitted updated holdings, thank you! If your institution requires additional support or an extension on the deadline, please contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org. HathiTrust relies on accurate print holdings data from our membership to provide core services and calculate annual fees.
Summary of Hathifiles Recent Update
HathiTrust hathifiles are inventory files describing every single item in the collection. Many member libraries use hathifiles in combination with HathiTrust data feed options to extract targeted sets of metadata. Periodically, we may update the hathifiles in order to provide more value for users of the hathifiles.
On July 1, 2018 we added additional fields to the HathiTrust hathifiles to enhance data analysis.
New Data Element #1: Author
For the first time, we are including the author as a separate data element to allow for easier data analysis.
New Data Element #2: Access Profile
The access profile is used internally in HathiTrust applications to control access to items. The four profiles indicate whether an item has download restrictions. They work in combination with the rights codes to determine user access.
New file: header
In addition to adding the two additional fields, we added a tab-delimited “header” file to the list of hathifiles. This file simply contains one row of labels for the data elements included in the hathifiles. It can be combined with the regular hathifiles to help you work with the data.
Read about the full description of these new data elements.
From the Collection
Caption: Statue of Liberty, Guide to the statue drawing.
Authors: Benjamin Levine and Isabelle F. Story
Published: Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, 1957
Contributed to HathiTrust by University of Michigan (HathiTrust member since 2008)
Copyright Review Program
Preparing for Public Domain Day (US) - 1923 publications in HathiTrust
January 1, 2019 is a significant date for anyone interested in the public domain. On this day, works published in 1923 will enter the public domain in the United States, and HathiTrust and its member libraries are preparing to celebrate this momentous occasion.
In anticipation of this event, we have created a collection of works published in 1923 that are already open thanks to copyright review or Creative Commons licenses, or that will become open to users located in the US this coming January:
HathiTrust Collection: 1923 Publications
If your library wants to compare what is in HathiTrust to your collection and digitize 1923 works that HathiTrust is missing, you can download the metadata and compare it to your holdings. Documentation on how to download metadata from a collection in Collection Builder can be found on the HathiTrust website.
If your library plans to digitize 1923 items and wants to have them in HathiTrust by January 1, get in touch as soon as possible. Even if your institution does not plan to digitize these items, think about how you can celebrate these creative works and share the news when they enter the public domain. Contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org for questions or suggestions about the 1923 Publications collection.
| May 2018 | June 2018 | OVERALL | ||||
| Public Domain | All | Public Domain | All | Public Domain Determinations | All Determinations | |
| CRMS-US | 4,754 (77.4%) | 6,146 | 3,687 (72.2%) | 5,105 | 233,316 (56.1%) | 415,708 |
| CRMS-World | 266 (64.6%) | 412 | 148 (72.5%) | 204 | 160,504 (51.1%) | 314,241 |
Featured CRMS Volunteer: Caitlin Finlay
Head of Interlibrary Services, Cornell University
Years working in a library: More than 20 years
HathiTrust volunteer start date: October 2016
Review statistics: 1,613 total reviews, 957 public domain determinations
“I really enjoy knowing that this work is making so much material open and available to users. I feel like this is of a piece with the work I do in interlibrary loan, which is connecting users to resources that we may not have available locally. Participating in the project has also given me the opportunity to learn more about US copyright, which is useful in my regular job as well.”
Watch Recordings of HTRC’s Summer Webinar Series
The HathiTrust Research Center summer webinar series builds on concepts from the “Text Mining with HathiTrust” workshops offered during summer 2018. Covering topics related to computational text analysis and data skills relevant for librarians, the webinars are available as recordings online. The August 7 workshop is open for anyone to attend by joining the Zoom meeting link below.
August 7: Collaborating on HTRC Research, Nikki White (University of Iowa)
12 – 1 p.m. Central Time / 1 – 2 p.m. Eastern.
Join the webinar at this Zoom meeting URL: https://iu.zoom.us/j/797749804
Recent Webinars
May 15: Data Visualization, Eleanor Dickson (University of Illinois)
Recording: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/t/1_2ierhtza
June 12: Data Management, Ashley Hetrick (University of Illinois)
Recording: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/t/1_sssubk4c
July 17: Mining Newspaper Data, Alexander Leslie (Rutgers University)
Recording: Posted recording pending at time of publication.
August 8: Last HTRC Office Hours of the Summer
The HathiTrust Research Center continues to offer a support service for research and teaching with HTRC called HTRC, Help! Scholars and librarians with questions about computational text analysis using HathiTrust corpus data can join monthly virtual office hours, held the second Wednesday of each month at 3:00 p.m. ET. An expert from the HTRC answers questions and discuss research projects. Additionally, extended answers to frequently asked questions about HTRC are shared online.
Upcoming office hours date: August 8, 2018, 3:00 p.m. ET
Join office hours (via Zoom): http://go.illinois.edu/htrchelp-live
U.S. Federal Documents Program
The U.S. Federal Documents Program continues to invest in building our collection and in improving access to federal documents in HathiTrust. Read more about program activities, including our “gap-filling” project, user needs investigation, and metadata improvement efforts in the July 2018 Federal Documents Program Update.
Of note are results of our recent user needs survey. Some key findings were that respondents consider HathiTrust a go-to place for older federal government documents, and that they like the ability to search the full text of many publications that aren’t digitally available anywhere else. Thank you again to all who participated in the survey!
Shared Print Program
Phase 2 has begun, with a goal to secure print retention commitments at 61 prospective Retention Libraries for HathiTrust digital monographs that did not receive a commitment in Phase 1. Work is in process to create a holdings analysis database using the OCLC Sustainable Collection Services GreenGlass service, and a Retention Models Working Group has been established to consider how to define the desired number of print copies to retain under various circumstances. See more information in Launching Phase 2.
Recruitment is underway for a Shared Print Program Officer to succeed Lizanne Payne, who has announced her plan to retire in early 2019.
In the News, Publications, and Research
HathiTrust serves a range of academic and scholarly needs, and, in keeping to its mission to “share the record of human knowledge,” also offers access to US federal documents, local records, publications, and other materials sought by citizen researchers across the nation and globe. Below are two projects passing through the @hathitrust Twitter account that use the collection to advance historical knowledge and genealogical research.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433008497160;view=1up;seq=13
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
HathiTrust staff will be attending the following events. Please contact us if you wish to meet us at any of these events!
August 1-2: 2018 North America China Conference at the OCLC Conference Center, Columbus, OH: Mike Furlough (presenting)
September 27: Humanities Open Book Program participants, New York, NY: Sandra McIntyre
October 8-10: edUi Conference 2018, Charlottesville, VA: Angelina Zaytsev
October 10-12: 2018 Access Conference, Hamilton, ON: Mike Furlough, Kristina Eden
October 15-17: Digital Library Federation Forum 2018 and NDSA Digital Preservation 2018, Las Vegas, NV: Natalie Fulkerson, Mike Furlough (presenting), Sandra McIntyre
October 22-24, 2018 Federal Depository Library Conference, Arlington, VA: Heather Christenson, Valerie Glenn
October 30: HathiTrust Member Meeting, Rosemont, IL: HathiTrust Staff
News or Research to Share?
If you or a patron at your institution has any 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.
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