Welcoming a New Member to HathiTrust
We are pleased to announce that San José State University has joined the HathiTrust member community. See the full membership list on our website.
Welcome to New PSC members
The Board of Governors approved the appointment of the following three candidates to serve on the Program Steering Committee (PSC) for three years, beginning July 2019:
- Liz Gushee, Associate Dean, Digital Strategies, University of Miami (Member library since 2011)
- Harish Maringanti, Associate Dean for IT & Digital Library Services, University of Utah (Member library since 2010)
- Barbara Rockenbach, Associate University Librarian for Research & Learning, Columbia University (Member library since 2009)
HathiTrust thanks departing PSC member Michael Stoller, New York University. (Member library since 2010)
Board of Governors Nominations Now Open
HathiTrust began accepting nominations for candidates for the 2020 Board of Governors in late July and welcomes nominations from member institutions through August 12. Review the official notice of the 2019 election process, which includes detailed instructions for nominations and requirements of nominees.
The members of the 2019 Nominating Committee are:
John Culshaw, University of Iowa (Chair) (Member library since 2008)
Chris Cox, Clemson University (Member library since 2019)
Anne Houston, Lafayette College (Member library since 2011)
Beth McNeil, Purdue University (Member library since 2008)
Erik Mitchell, University of California, San Diego (Member library since 2008)
Register for the 2019 Member Meeting, Oct. 23
Registration is now open for the 2019 Annual Member Meeting: Driving and Supporting Change in the Research Ecosystem.
This year’s meeting will take place Wednesday, October 23, 2019, from 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. ET
at the Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, IL.
The meeting is open to member libraries only, and attendance from the member representative, director, or dean of each institution is encouraged. Unfortunately, we have space for only one attendee from each institution. Member Representatives should have received a registration link in email.There is no registration fee for attendance and registration includes two meals and refreshments. Members are responsible for the costs of travel and hotel.
For more information, see 2019 Member Meeting or contact Melissa Stewart with questions (mmstewa@hathitrust.org).
Highlights from HathiTrust’s Mid-Year Report
Six months into the first year of implementing HathiTrust Strategic Directions, 2019-2023, HathiTrust has achieved many milestones. The plan reinforces our commitment to digital preservation and access, to our role as stewards of the cultural record, our interdependent success as libraries, and to our collective work to support this mission. The specific investments and actions we are undertaking in 2019 align with the plan’s overarching objectives to Transform, Enhance, and Empower.
Between January 2019 and June 2019, HathiTrust and its members
Welcomed new staff members
Approved formal Membership Criteria, Fee Model changes, and changes to Board Bylaws
Improved accessibility for those with print disabilities with an interface update
Opened nearly 54,000 publications published in 1923 that are now in the public domain
Completed Phase 2 of the Shared Print Program
Added eight new members
Participated in the Mellon Foundation-funded project Federating Repositories of Accessible Learning Materials for Higher Education (FRAME)
Read Mike Furlough’s blog about HathiTrust’s accomplishments to date and plans for the remainder of 2019.
Aaron Elkiss to Join HathiTrust as Enterprise Architect
HathiTrust is pleased to announce that Aaron Elkiss will officially join HathiTrust staff with an appointment at the University of Michigan Library as Enterprise Architect beginning September 2019.
Aaron is already known to many staff at HathiTrust and HathiTrust members. As senior systems programmer on the Architecture and Engineering team in the Library Information Technology division at the University of Michigan, Aaron has been working on HathiTrust systems and software since 2010. An enthusiastic advocate of the mission of HathiTrust, he has worked on multiple aspects of technological projects for the HathiTrust Digital Library.
In his new role, Aaron will develop the strategic vision for HathiTrust’s long-term technical direction and lead that vision’s execution as a key partner with the Director of Services and Operations and other HathiTrust staff and technical teams. Join us in welcoming Aaron to HathiTrust!
Read the complete announcement.
Members Approve Bylaws Amendments
The HathiTrust membership voted to approve both proposed amendments to the Bylaws with 107 of 131 voting members responding. Both proposals received far more Yes votes than needed for approval. Both also received a few No and Abstain votes. Find details on the HathiTrust website page 2019 Voting Proposal: Bylaws Change.
Outcome of Weighted Voting
Board of Governors YES: 130 weighted votes (103 members) NO: 2 weighted votes (2 members) ABSTAIN: 2 weighted votes (2 members)
Officers YES: 131 weighted votes (104 members) NO: 0 votes ABSTAIN: 3 weighted votes (3 members)
Complete 5-Minute Survey on Global Digitization Registry
In 2019 HathiTrust has partnered with the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Research Libraries UK, and the University of Glasgow to explore development of an international registry documenting all works digitized by research libraries. Funded by the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council, the one-year planning grant supports work to develop international collaborations, feasibility studies, and some limited data analysis.
The partners wish to better understand the potential uses of such a service. The online survey linked below gathers views from academic and research librarians on the potential benefits of a global dataset of digitised texts. HathiTrust members have a unique perspective on the value of this potential collection and we encourage you to participate. The survey will take no more than 5 minutes to complete. Thank you in advance for contributing to this research.
Complete the online survey: https://glasgow-research.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/gddnetwork-survey
Shared Print Webinar: Recording from July 16
On July 16, 2019, Heather Weltin, Shared Print Program Officer, hosted a Shared Print Program Update webinar. Topics included an overview of Phase 2, a look at the current status of the Shared Print Program, and future developments.
A recording can be found online on the HathiTrust YouTube channel.
HTRC Workshop Series for Fall 2019
Keep an eye out for registration details for fall 2019 HathiTrust Research Center workshops. Registration will open soon for 4 workshops hosted by HathiTrust member institutions. Attendees from the host institution will have priority for registration for each workshop, but space will be reserved for attendees from other HathiTrust member institutions.
Each event will consist of a full-day workshop for librarians and a half-day workshop for researchers. Sign up for a workshop, or help us by sharing news of the workshop series with your librarian and researcher colleagues.
Thank you to all of the member organizations who responded to our call for hosts! Calls for hosts for the spring 2020 semester will go out in November.
More details can be found here: https://www.hathitrust.org/htrc_workshops
From the Collection: The 17 Millionth Item!
Caption: Title page fromThe Conquest of Plassans
Title: The Conquest of Plassans
Author: Zola, Émile
Published: London, Chatto & Windus, 1917. Contributed by University of California (HathiTrust member since 2008).
This summer, the HathiTrust Digital Library received a digitized copy of the 1917 edition of the The Conquest of Plassans, a contribution that marked the 17 millionth item in the repository. It is the fourth novel published in Zola's Rougon-Macquart sequence. Other items contributed around the same time include texts in German, Korean, Japanese, and Spanish, as well as texts on Rhode Island colonial money and its counterfeiting; The baking industry under N.R.A.; and The Philippine Islands, an address delivered before the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New-York, April 21st, 1904, by the Hon. William H. Taft, secretary of war.
Thanks to all HathiTrust members and contributors who continue to preserve, manage, and grow the largest collection of digital books stewarded by academic and research libraries.
Copyright Review Program
July’s overall Copyright Review Program statistics:
CRMS-US Reviews: July 2019
Public Domain = 4,719 (79.5%)
All = 5,936
Overall
Public Domain Determinations = 457,432 (56.2%)
All Determinations = 814,047
Featured Copyright Reviewer: Heather Shoecraft
Heather Shoecraft, Training Specialist for Technical Services, University of Michigan
M.S.I. from the University of Michigan, expected May 2020
Years working in a library: 10
HathiTrust start date: April 2012
Review statistics: 7,669 total reviews; 5,256 public domain determinations
“Working with the copyright review program at HathiTrust is a truly rewarding experience. It is exciting to know that I am increasing the body of works that are available in HathiTrust. As the project manager for State Government Documents copyright review, I also play a key role in teaching team members about copyright and building relationships across institutions. Our team recently celebrated the completion of our 100,000th copyright determination and it is an honor to be a part of that milestone.”
Digitizing the public domain: 1924 publications to open in 2020
In January 2020, works published in 1924 will become public domain in the United States. Some members may be interested in digitizing 1924 publications that are not yet in HathiTrust. For that purpose, we are providing members a report of 1924 items for their analysis about what from their collection could be digitized and contributed to grow the number of digitized public domain items in HathiTrust.
What You Can Do
Use the data in the spreadsheet report below to compare with your collections and digitize 1924 publications that HathiTrust does not yet have in our collection. The spreadsheet lists all 1924 publications in HathiTrust, both US and non-US. Some are already open through copyright review, Creative Commons licenses, or federal government authored works. Any that are not yet open are expected to become open in January 2020.
1924 Report for Members: https://bit.ly/2M2Idsz
The dataset follows the hathifiles format, which is described at https://www.hathitrust.org/hathifiles_description
Any questions about the report or about contributing to HathiTrust may be submitted to feedback@issues.hathitrust.org.
Shared Print Program
As we start the next phases of our Shared Print Program, we are developing the ability for retention libraries to update their existing retention commitment records and address issues related to lost or missing commitments. We will be contacting Shared Print Retention Libraries directly about this in September.
Following completion of this, we will begin developing processes to transfer commitments to alternate Retention Libraries (for lost, damaged, committed in error, duplicate copy, or missing titles), analyze existing retention commitments for gap analysis, and develop reports comparing library print holdings to retention commitments.
As you may recall, our other goals for developing the Shared Print Program were to reduce overall costs of collection management for HathiTrust members and to catalyze national collective management of collections. These are matters of strategic importance, and we are evaluating a variety of efforts to help realize this potential. These efforts include developing collection reports for member libraries based on the work described above and HathiTrust’s continued participation in the Partnership for Shared Book Collections, a national effort with the goal of coordinating collaboration across shared print programs. You'll be hearing more about the next phases of the program throughout this year.
Federal Documents Program
As of July 1, 2019, our federal documents collection contains 1,353,343 volumes, which includes 509,600 monographs and 32,619 serial titles. Thank you to all of our contributors and especially to The Ohio State University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for major recent contributions of federal documents.
In recent months we have been tackling a number of projects that will support future collaborative collection development for our federal documents collection and other areas of focus in HathiTrust. One of these projects is an investigation of collection analysis use cases. The project is focused on the identification and documentation of use cases, and assessment of our capabilities to provide information to our member libraries for collection development purposes such as collection comparisons and choosing items to digitize.
The resulting deeper understanding of needs and current capabilities will set the stage for future projects to develop additional capabilities, evolve service offerings, and intentionally manage the HathiTrust collection based on insights gleaned from use case inventory.
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.