Table of Contents
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
Member Reminder: Vote by June 18 on Proposal to Amend Bylaws
June Website Changes Enhance Accessibility
“Discovering — or Re-discovering — HathiTrust” Webinar now Online
Wednesday, October 23: Annual Member Meeting
Come to HathiTrust Program Officers Open House ALA
HathiTrust Research Center: ACS Awardees for 2019-2020
From the Collection: How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards
Did You Know?: HathiTrust Takedown Policy
Copyright Review Program
Featured Copyright Reviewer: Laura Sare
Shared Print Program: Overview and July Webinar
Federal Documents Program
In the News, Publications, and Research
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
We are pleased to announce that Queen’s University and University of North Texas have joined the HathiTrust member community. See the full membership list on our website.
Member Reminder: Vote by June 18 on Proposal to Amend Bylaws
At its October 2018 meeting, HathiTrust’s Board of Governors reviewed a proposal to modify the organization’s Bylaws, and recommended the proposal be presented to the membership for approval. The proposal would amend the Bylaws so that an elected board member’s term would extend through the end of their service on the Board’s Executive Committee.
The amendment is intended to ensure continuity of leadership on the Board of Governors and ensure that elected representatives have the opportunity to serve in leadership roles on the Board. Changes to HathiTrust Bylaws require a two-thirds majority of weighted votes cast by members.
To prepare for the vote, voting member representatives are encouraged to watch the following webinar addressing HathiTrust governance, Bylaws, voting, and the proposed amendment. Voting ends June 18. If you are a Member Representative who did not receive a ballot, please contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org.
Watch the recording of the May 21st webinar:
“Your HathiTrust: An Introduction to HathiTrust Governance”
June Website Changes Enhance Accessibility
On June 5th, 2019, we updated the HathiTrust Digital Library to improve the accessibility.
In the past few months, we have undertaken a comprehensive accessibility evaluation of our Digital Library. As a result, we identified a number of areas where we could improve the HathiTrust website and make it easier for users with disabilities to navigate the website and read books.
Although this update primarily impacts users who navigate the site using assistive technology such as screen readers or keyboards, sighted users will also notice some visual and design changes to the Digital Library. Read more about the changes and evaluation process:
HathiTrust Marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2019 by Planning Website Update.
“Discovering — or Re-discovering — HathiTrust” Webinar now Online
More than 150 individuals from new and long-time member libraries, attended a webinar to discover — or re-discover — HathiTrust. Topics covered the HathiTrust collection, services, and opportunities for involvement; basic search and access for the Digital Library; and where to get started with text and data mining using the HathiTrust Research Center. We encourage you to share the recording with other interested parties on your campus.
Pass on your suggestions for future webinar topics to Member Engagement and Communications Specialist, Jessica Rohr at jbelle@hathitrust.org.
Watch the recording of the June 6 webinar:
“Discovering — or Re-discovering — HathiTrust”
Wednesday, October 23: Annual Member Meeting
The 2019 Member Meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 23 at the Loews Chicago O’Hare Hotel. More details will be sent to member representatives and primary contacts in the coming months.
Come to HathiTrust Program Officers Open House at ALA
HathiTrust staff are heading to ALA 2019 in Washington D.C. and want to see you! HathiTrust Program Officers Heather Christenson (Collections & Federal Documents) and Heather Weltin (Shared Print) are working on future services and program planning and would love to hear your thoughts or answer questions you may have about the programs or HathiTrust.
No need to sign up in advance! Just head to the ALA location below at the designated time:
Location: Networking Uncommons (in the main convention center)
- Saturday, June 22 at 2:30 pm ET - 3:30 pm ET
- Sunday, June 23 at 1:00 pm ET - 2:00 pm ET
You can also catch up with Member Engagement Specialist, Jessica Rohr, at the sessions above or at the Network Uncommons on Friday at 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET and Sunday 8:00 am-9:00 am ET.
HathiTrust Research Center: ACS Awardees for 2019-2020
The HathiTrust Research Center is pleased to announce the selection of five projects for the Advanced Collaborative Support program for 2019-2020. Awardees gain access to additional technical guidance and support, as well as computing resources, for researchers to complete a HathiTrust-related text mining project. HTRC received 15 excellent project proposals this year, and it was difficult to select the final 5.
This cycle’s projects are:
- Building Large-Scale Collections of Genre Fiction, Laure Thompson and David Mimno, Cornell University (Member library since 2010)
- Mapping scientific names to the HathiTrust Digital Library, Matthew J. Yoder and Dmitry Mozzherin, University of Illinois (Member library since 2008)
- The Conglomerate Era: A Computational History of Literature in the Age of the Agent, Dan Sinykin, Emory University (Member library since 2010)
- Semantic Phasor Embeddings, Molly Des Jardin, Scott Enderle, and Katie Rawson, University of Pennsylvania (Member library since 2010)
- Deriving Basic Illustration Metadata, Stephen Krewson, Yale University (Member library since 2010)
Read more about the projects: https://www.hathitrust.org/hathitrust-research-center-awards-five-acs-projects.
From the Collection: How to Paint Signs and Sho'Cards
Caption: Various fonts used in lettering.
Title: How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards
Authors: E.C. Matthews
Published: New York: J. S. Ogilvie publishing company, 1920. Contributed by Library of Congress (HathiTrust member since 2011).
Did You Know?: HathiTrust Takedown Policy
HathiTrust is committed to open access for items in the collection where law and limitations permit. In some cases, someone lets us know that there are items in the collection that should not be available due to privacy or legal limitations. HathiTrust has a policy and process in place to restrict access to those identified titles. We welcome you to contact us at feedback@issues.hathitrust.org in the following cases:
- If you are a copyright holder and believe that we’re providing access inappropriately to your book. We provide access to books only in cases where we believe the copyright has expired or we have received permission to make books available, including with a Creative Commons license.
- If you believe that we are inappropriately providing access to private or personally identifiable information. See the HathiTrust Privacy Policy about how we define private information.
When we receive a notice to takedown a book, we take the following steps:
- Restrict access to the book immediately. If the request comes in during non-business hours, we may not be able to act on your request until we’re in the office.
- Investigate the claim. For cases of copyright infringement, we review the history of the book to determine how access was provided and to confirm the claim of the copyright holder. For cases related to private information, we review the pages where private information is revealed to determine if it falls within University of Michigan guidelines and whether the concern is valid.
- Make a final determination of the appropriate access status for the book. During this step, we may follow up with the individual who made the claim for additional information.
We take our responsibility as the custodians for member content very seriously and follow both legal and ethical considerations, while balancing these with the goal of providing patrons with access to information.
Copyright Review Program
May’s overall Copyright Review Program statistics (combining both U.S. and Worldview determinations):
CRMS Reviews: May 2019
Public Domain Determinations = 446,570 (55.8%)
All Determinations = 800,683
Featured Copyright Reviewer: Laura Sare
Laura Sare, Government Information Librarian, Texas A & M University (Member library since 2010)
Years working in a library: 20
HathiTrust start date: Oct 2017
Review statistics: 8,231 total reviews; 7,232 public domain determinations
“I have found it fascinating to uncover the variety of topics on which state governments publish. My major in college was History and it is interesting to see the different focuses of states through their agency publications; there is sometimes a regionalism that is visible at this level that is missing in federal level government publications. I have saved the bibliographic information of several state publications that I want to go back and read if they are determined to not have copyright. It is exciting to be making these publications accessible to a wider audience.”
Shared Print Program: Overview and July Webinar
In May 2019, HathiTrust completed Phase 2 of the Shared Print Program. At this time, 50 HathiTrust member libraries have committed to retain 1,578,626 monographs as part of this phase. These newly committed volumes represent more than 750,000 individual titles held in the HathiTrust Digital Library (about 10% of all HathiTrust digital monographs).
The completion of Phase 2 resulted in 79 HathiTrust member libraries committing to retain almost 18 million monographs volumes. These volumes represent more than 5.4 million individual titles held in the HathiTrust Digital Library (about 76% of all HathiTrust digital monographs), which is a significant step toward a primary goal of the program: to steward print copies of all HathiTrust digital holdings.
Join Heather Weltin, HathiTrust's Shared Print Program Officer, for a webinar to hear information on Phase 2, the current status of the Shared Print Program, and future plans:
Webinar: Shared Print Program Update
Date and Time: Tuesday, July 16th at 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm ET/12:00 pm - 1:00 pm PT
Presenters: Heather Weltin, HathiTrust's Shared Print Program Officer
Registration for the webinar is available at https://forms.gle/qPWuNsszrFyzgU4VA.
Shared Print Program Website Updates
Recently you may have seen some changes in our Shared Print Program web pages. We reorganized the pages to make information more discoverable, reduced the overall number of pages, and added some statistics and visualizations. Perhaps the most important change was to make them more accessible to users with print disabilities. We hope these changes will improve all users’ ability to find the information they are looking for.
We also created a new Retention Libraries page in order to assist Retention Libraries with information they may need related to the Shared Print Program. If there is anything that you think should be added to continue to improve resources for our Retention Libraries, please contact Heather Weltin (weltin@hathitrust.org), our Shared Print Program Officer.
Federal Documents Program
Our collection continues to grow by leaps and bounds, thanks to our member libraries. As of May 1, HathiTrust contains 1,342,948 U.S. Federal Documents. These include 507,121 monographs, and 32,478 serial titles. Recent new additions include large numbers of publications from the U.S. Geological Survey, USDA Economic Research Service, Department of Transportation including the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and NASA.
Major contributors include the following member libraries:
University of California — Riverside (Member library since 2008)
University of Illinois — Urbana-Champaign (Member library since 2008)
University of California — Berkeley (Member library since 2008)
The Ohio State University (Member library since 2008)
In the News, Publications, and Research
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
HathiTrust staff will be attending the following events. Please contact us if you wish to meet us!
June 20-25, American Library Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.: Heather Christenson, Jessica Rohr, Heather Weltin.
News or Research to Share?
If you or a patron at your institution has news to share regarding a publication, presentation, research, or curricula related to HathiTrust, we’d love to hear about it. Please share with Jessica Rohr, member engagement and communications specialist, at jbelle@hathitrust.org.