Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
Webinar: Intro to HathiTrust Governance and Vote to Amend Bylaws
Wednesday, October 23: Annual Member Meeting
Save the Date for Member Webinar: “Discovering — or Rediscovering — HathiTrust”
Annual Print Holdings Update Not Required for 2019
HTRC: Depositing Items for Text Mining Research
Michigan State University Opens More than 1,000 Important Agricultural Publications
From the Collection: U.S. Federal Documents: EPA Collection
Copyright Review Program
Featured Copyright Reviewer: Anne Conway
In the News, Publications, and Research
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
Welcoming New Members to HathiTrust
We are pleased to announce that University of Southern California and Queen’s University have joined the HathiTrust member community. See the full membership list on our website.
Webinar: Intro to HathiTrust Governance and Vote 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 this spring. 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 attend the following webinar addressing HathiTrust Governance, Bylaws, voting, and the proposed amendment.
Webinar: “Your HathiTrust: An Introduction to HathiTrust Governance”
Date and Time: Tuesday, May 21, 4:00-5:00 PM ET
Presenter: Mike Furlough, HathiTrust Executive Director
Member representatives and primary contacts received complete registration information and webinar streaming the week of May 6. HathiTrust will open the vote on these changes on May 28 and conclude it on June 18.
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.
Save the Date for Member Webinar: “Discovering — or Rediscovering — HathiTrust”
New member institutions, as well as long-time members, are invited to attend a webinar this spring to discover — or re-discover — HathiTrust. Topics will include an overview of the HathiTrust collection, services, and opportunities for involvement, as well as demonstrations of basic search and access for the digital library and where to get started with text and data mining using the HathiTrust Research Center.
Webinar: “Discovering — or Re-discovering — HathiTrust”
Date and Time: Thursday, June 6, 1:00-2:00 pm ET
Presenters: HathiTrust Staff
Complete registration information and webinar streaming link will be sent to Member Representatives and Primary Contacts.
Annual Print Holdings Update Not Required for 2019
As reported in recent email communications to members, HathiTrust has decided to suspend the annual member print holdings update process in 2019 for the following reasons:
- To reduce the workload on members and HathiTrust staff associated with the generation, receipt, assessment, and processing of hundreds of files each year.
- To reduce the frequency of holdings submissions and, therefore, the year-on-year volatility in fees.
In 2019, HathiTrust staff will instead undertake a review of the systems and processes that support the print holdings workflow in order to identify and implement improvements.
HathiTrust anticipates moving to a 2- or 3-year cycle in order to meet the objectives above and a decision on resuming the cycle will occur by the close of 2019. More details are available on the current print holdings web page. If your library would like to submit revised holdings this year, for any reason, you may certainly do so. Please email feedback@issues.hathitrust.org to initiate this process or to ask any questions.
HTRC: Depositing Items for Text Mining Research
Did you know that you can digitize and submit digitized items to HathiTrust so that they will be available for analysis with the HathiTrust Research Center’s tools and services?
The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) synchronizes data nightly from the HathiTrust repository, so, within a few days of the items being deposited into HathiTrust, researchers will be able to perform text and data mining on them. HTRC’s Extracted Features dataset, which is generated in bulk instead of nightly, represents more of a snapshot of the HathiTrust corpus at a specific moment in time.
Several libraries have explored this workflow as an option for supporting researchers on their campuses who need additional items in the HathiTrust repository to advance their research. If you are interested in learning more about depositing items into HathiTrust or about the HTRC tools, contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org with your questions.
Michigan State University Opens More than 1,000 Important Agricultural Publications
HathiTrust Digital Library is a trove of preserved agriculture documents and practices. Several institutions have made these documents available using a Creative Commons license, including a recent copyright release of more than 1,000 agricultural bulletins and reports published by Michigan State University. Suzanne Teghtmeyer, the Agriculture, AFRE, Botany, Forestry & Horticulture Librarian with Michigan State University Library, has been instrumental in working with her university to get MSU’s agricultural documents opened. MSU’s story is part of a growing awareness among HathiTrust members that they can play an important role in securing rights information for their institution’s own publications.
Read the full story on how Suzanne and other HathiTrust members have created and collected agricultural publications in HathiTrust in this blog post by Copyright Review Program Manager, Kristina Eden.
Are you interested in working with HathiTrust to get your institution’s publications open with a Creative Commons license? Learn tips for compiling a list of items and seeking permission to open them from your institution by attending HathiTrust’s reprisal of the popular webinar:
“Opening Your Institution’s Publications in HathiTrust”
Date and Time: May 30, 2019 from 2:00-3:00pm ET
Presenter: Kristina Eden, Copyright Review Program Manager
No registration required. Anyone with the link can join: https://bluejeans.com/957875719.
Image soure: MSU Extension Bulletin 468: Michigan Agriculture: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112019644803?urlappend=%3Bseq=117
From the Collection: U.S. Federal Documents: EPA Collection
Caption: President Ronald Reagan, during his 1984 State of the Union address, pledges to ask Congress for $157 million beginning in 1985 to acquire new park and conservation land.
Title: EPA Journal, 10, No. 4 (Jan-Feb, 1984): 2.
Published: United States Environmental Protection Agency; Office of Public Awareness; 1984. Washington, D.C. (Contributed by various HathiTrust institutions. See complete catalog record.)
Federal documents comprise a significant portion of the overall HathiTrust collection. HathiTrust’s US Federal Documents collection contains more than 1.3 million items. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publications, from which the above publication is drawn, includes all those publications in the HathiTrust corpus identified as being produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The collection is updated as items are added to the HathiTrust repository.
The following are additional curated collections to enable focused discovery of U.S. federal documents in HathiTrust:
- U.S. Federal Documents
- U.S. Congressional Serial Set
- Bureau of Indian Affairs publications
- Foreign Relations of the United States
- Statistical Abstract of the United States
- U.S. Civil Rights Commission
Copyright Review Program
April’s overall Copyright Review Program statistics:
CRMS-US Reviews: April 2019
Public Domain = 5,407
All = 7,288
Overall
Public Domain Determinations = 278,282
All Determinations = 475,547
CRMS-World: April 2019
Public Domain Determinations = 162,664
All Determinations = 317,008
Featured Copyright Reviewer: Anne Conway
Anne Conway, Supervisor, Preservation Services, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Years working in a library: 14 years
HathiTrust start date: December 2017
Review statistics: 11,583 total reviews, 7,229 public domain determinations
“It is rewarding to be part of a project that makes more books accessible to the public through digital access in HathiTrust. I value the preservation aspect of this, too. I also find it personally rewarding and satisfying. I have learned a lot being a part of this project.”
In the News, Publications, and Research
In the News
Dan Tynan, “Digital Library Opens Avenues for Data Analysis in Academic Research,” EdTech Magazine, April 22, 2019, https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2019/04/digital-library-opens-avenues-data-analysis-academic-research
HathiTrust Staff on the Road
HathiTrust staff will be attending the following events. Please contact us if you wish to meet up!
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, 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