Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
Save-the-Date: Oct. 27, 2022 HathiTrust Member Meeting
Community Week 2022: Presentations and Recordings Now Online
2022 Board of Governors Election Begins in September
HathiTrust User Support Upgrades
Did You Know? Embed HathiTrust Books or Pages
Perspectives from HathiTrust Blog: Collection Creation Case Study: African American Fiction
From the Collection: The Garies and Their Friends
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
We are pleased to announce that Franklin & Marshall College, Pratt Institute, and the University of Northern Iowa have joined the HathiTrust member community. See the full membership list on our website.
Save-the-Date: Oct. 27, 2022 HathiTrust Member Meeting
Registration will open soon for the virtual 2022 Member Meeting, “Constructing Shared Culture: Building Vision, Values, and Strategies for the Future,” slated for Thursday, October 27. As we reflect back and look ahead to our strategy beyond 2022, we will consider how to grow and respond to emerging needs in teaching, learning, research, and stewardship of the cultural record.
The meeting will again be open to anyone affiliated with a member library. We encourage all members to pass along the meeting and registration information to their teams and colleagues.
Virtual Member Meeting: Thursday, October 27, 2022
12:00 PM EDT/9:00 AM PDT - 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT
You’ll have several opportunities to reflect on organizational goals and on topics of interest with colleagues in member-led sessions on various topics. What you share on this day will be part of the foundation for our strategic conversations in the coming year.
Community Week 2022: Presentations and Recordings Now Online
Thanks to all those who attended or presented at the 2022 Community Week! We had 300 unique individuals from across the membership attend at least 1 of the 9 sessions. There were anywhere from 40 to 80+ people in each session meaning many folks were able to attend more than one. We have posted presentation recordings on our Community Week YouTube channel and you can also find links to presentation slides and recordings on the 2022 Community Week webpage. We’ll be planning member-led webinars all year long, so send an email to Jessica Rohr (jbelle@hathitrust.org) if you have a suggestion for one.
2022 Board of Governors Election Begins in September
HathiTrust will hold its annual election for membership of the Board of Governors beginning on September 7. For 2022 there is one open seat to be filled, replacing Elaine Westbrooks, Cornell University, whose term ends in December. The newly elected member will serve a three-year term beginning January 1, 2023. Member Representatives will then have the opportunity to vote on candidates through September 27, 2022. Read the official notice of the 2022 Election Process, which includes detailed instructions for nominations and requirements of nominees.
HathiTrust User Support Upgrades
We’re improving the tools we use to support you and your community! However, the methods for obtaining help from HathiTrust User Support remain the same. You may submit a ticket by clicking on the Feedback link from the website and completing the short form or by emailing feedback@issues.hathitrust.org. While the transition is underway between July 18 and August 25, you may experience slower response times, but all messages and requests will be carefully answered as soon as possible! Thank you for your patience as we make these changes to improve our service.
Did You Know? Embed HathiTrust Books or Pages
You can embed a link to a single title or to a single page. Find instructions on the HathiTrust website or use the “Embed This Item” link in the catalog interface. Use either the item URL or page URL for your embedded link. This feature could be useful for subject specific LibGuides or students’ digital projects, among other applications.
Perspectives from HathiTrust Blog
Collection Creation Case Study: African American Fiction
In this blog post, Chris Powell, Encoded Text Services Coordinator at the University of Michigan Library, shares her method for creating HathiTrust collections. As Chris writes, this collection is not comprehensive, but reflects careful curation using bibliographies of published Black literature. One source, the Black Book Interactive Project based at the University of Kansas, also figures prominently in one of the four grant-funded HathiTrust Research Center SCWAReD projects. Outcomes from that project will help identify gaps to fill in the HathiTrust collection.
Read Chris’s post, Collection Creation Case Study: African American Fiction.
“I've been building [HathiTrust] collections since the summer of 2008 . . . What started as a task to demonstrate the functionality and utility of the feature has turned into an ongoing fascination with stumbling onto a topic and seeing if I can locate material on that topic in HathiTrust. If there is intriguing material, I inevitably build a collection – generally a private one for my own use – but if there are enough titles and a reasonably interesting focus I will make a public collection. One such collection is African American Fiction, which contains fiction (including plays) by Black American authors.”
Of the 500+ titles in the African American Fiction collection in HathiTrust, some items are in the public domain and are available to read and download. Other titles are restricted for reading access by copyright law and are searchable as text only. The collection metadata may be downloaded in a text or JSON file and used as a bibliography to locate the items in print collections or to advance research in other ways. You can also use the “Find in a Library” catalog feature to locate a print copy in a library near you. If you have titles to suggest for inclusion in the collection, pass them on to feedback@issues.hathitrust.org.
From the Collection: The Garies and Their Friends
Caption: Author Frank J. Webb was the second published African American novelist.
Title: The Garies and their friends
Authors: Frank J. Webb
Published: New York: AMS Press, 1971. (Reprint of 1857 edition). Contributed by University of Michigan (HathiTrust member since 2008).
Learn about author Francis Johnson Webb, newspaper editor, educator, equal rights activist, and novelist. This title was recently identified by Chris Powell (see above) and while it was initially thought to be restricted by copyright law, it was researched by the HathiTrust Copyright Review program and determined to be in the public domain.