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Perspectives from HathiTrust

What's in your collection?

Submitted by hathitrust on June 6, 2012

Are you familiar with the Collections area of HathiTrust?

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb

There are currently 940 public collections created by users and library staff members at partner institutions, including several we have featured. HathiTrust collections provide a way to aggregate digital items related to a common theme, or associated with a given physical collection or location (for instance, the University of Michigan has created a collection of its Hatcher Graduate Reference reading room). Items can be added to a collection from HathiTrust full-text search results pages. Once they have been added to a collection, the full-text and bibliographic metadata of items can be searched independently of the larger repository. Items in collections can also be quickly copied to new or existing collections. These features make collections an easy way to refine a set of search results, share batches of items with others, or (in the case of the Michigan Graduate Reference collection), allow staff and users to search within specific collections to find the book with that one particular index or obscure term that they can pull from the shelf for more information.

Staff at some of our partner institutions have been talking about how great it would be to have even more high-quality collections to help demonstrate the usefulness of this feature (and be used!). We'd also like to explore how this kind of feature could better support library needs.

It’s easy to create a collection

Once you are logged into HathiTrust (either as a member of a partner institution or using a University of Michigan Friend Account), you can easily create collections when viewing a volume or from full-text search results as shown below:

 

 

We can help

Because large collections can be somewhat cumbersome to create manually, we can work with you to help build them! To create a custom collection, we need to know the specific the items that are desired to be included. We can work from a list of item identifiers, or from one or more search queries. Item identifiers for large collections, or collections made from criteria that are not easy to search for can be obtained using one of the methods below:

  1. HathiTrust's tab-delimited metadata files. These files are an inventory of repository holdings, containing a variety of identifiers for volumes (ISBN, LCCN, OCLC, etc.), copyright information, and limited bibliographic metadata for each volume in HathiTrust. A description of the files is available at http://hathitrust.org/hathifiles_description.
  2. HathiTrust Data API. In addition to retrieving entire volume packages from HathiTrust (including images and OCR), the Data API can be used to find ids for volumes digitized from a particular source. The University of Michigan has built a demonstration application using the Data API that illustrates how this can be done. Please see http://www.lib.umich.edu/two-over-threehundred.

Custom collections

Here are some examples of collections that have been custom-built. If you haven’t yet become familiar with our Collections feature, give it a try. If you are, and have some great ideas for collections but have had trouble making them, give us a holler and we can point you in the right direction or help you create it.

  • Collections built from one publication -- United States Congressional Serials Set: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=1597493732
    • Given the title, we were able to locate all items associated with that title in HathiTrust and build a collection.
  • Collections built from a search term in the HathiTrust catalog -- Ancestry and Genealogy: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=332123463
    • This collection was based on a catalog search for full view items where "genealogy" occurred anywhere in the bibliographic record. The owner has added items individually since the collection was created.
  • Collections built on holdings information in a partner catalog -- UM Hatcher Graduate Reference: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=30688098
    • The list of ids for this collection was assembled using location data from the University of Michigan Library.
  • Collections built from analysis -- English Short Title Catalog: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=247770968
    • HathiTrust is collaborating with the ESTC to determine volumes in a candidate set (English language volumes published before 1800), are both in the ESTC catalog and in HathiTrust. The matching volumes are included in the ESTC collection.

Note that once collection(s) are built, we will transfer ownership to the requester so the collection(s) can be updated and maintained.

Please contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org with any questions or to get started!

When a simple search just won't do

Submitted by hathitrust on April 26, 2012

By Heather Chistenson, HathiTrust Communications Working Group

Ten Million and Counting

Submitted by hathitrust on January 6, 2012

HathiTrust reached a major milestone on January 5, 2012, exceeding 10 million volumes in its digital collections. More than 2.7 million of these volumes are in the public domain, with viewing and downloading options available online. Statistics about the collections and a graph charting growth over time are available below (see also Statistics and Visualizations). We have also prepared a timeline noting significant events on our way to 10 million volumes. As of January 5, 2012, 23 of HathiTrust's 67 partners are depositing content in the repository. Details on contributions by institution can be found in our monthly updates. See also our News and Publications page for press releases, papers, presentations, and more about HathiTrust over the last several years.

Personas: Understanding HathiTrust Users

Submitted by hathitrust on December 16, 2011

By Jenny Emmanuel, HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group

The HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group recently released a set of “personas” depicting typical users of HathiTrust Digital Library.  Personas are aggregate statements that display information about typical users and their needs.  They are a commonly used usability method that collects data from multiple sources, including website analytics, search logs, first person stories, researcher observations, and other methods which are then aggregated into a narrative to depict stories depicting who HathiTrust users are and how they used the information within HathiTrust. 

Personas are typically used throughout the development process so that staff working on the HathiTrust interfaces, communicating with users, and librarians can have a shared idea who it is that uses the Hathi.  With personas, they can easily keep the end user in mind while they are improving HathiTrust, developing support materials, developing user education programs, or many other uses.

The HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group worked on the personas for several months, with the additional help of the University of Michigan’s User Experience Department.  The group gathered information from analytics, anecdotes from HathiTrust partners, various online publications about HathiTrust (blogs, articles, comments, etc.), reports from similar projects, and user feedback to identify major groups who use HathiTrust for research.  These data sources led to the creation of seven distinct groups of both academic and non-academic researchers, each of which became the basis of one of the personas. The collected data was then collated between each of these groups and then written as a narrative with a generic use case, a given identity, and a stock image to give each persona a personal touch.  Even though the personas appear to be of actual people and actual use, it should be noted that each persona is fictional, but supported by collected evidence.

The HathiTrust personas are used to guide further development of HathiTrust. They are also being utilized by the HathiTrust Communications Working group in their publicity and educational materials related to HathiTrust.

To view the personas, see: http://www.hathitrust.org/personas.

Is that the library in your pocket?

Submitted by hathitrust on December 3, 2011

By Suzanne Chapman, Chair, HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group

Looking for books to read on your shiny new tablet or other mobile device? This fall we officially released a mobile version of the HathiTrust Digital Library. The mobile site offers mobile-friendly access to key functionality including searching the HathiTrust catalog and reading HathiTrust "Full view" texts. Users from HathiTrust partner institutions can also download these "Full view" texts in PDF or ePub format to allow reading offline. Since the mobile interface is web-based, it works on all platforms and may be viewed either from mobile devices or from desktops and laptops. The interface has special functionality for tablets with two ways to read texts: either in the vertical scrolling format, or in a horizontal flip format.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think!

http://m.hathitrust.org/

Many thanks to the University of Michigan Library User Experience Department for designing and developing this exciting new interface.

HathiTrust Constitutional Convention on Record

Submitted by hathitrust on November 10, 2011

On October 8-9, 2011 delegates from across the U.S. and around the world gathered in Washington, DC for a landmark event, the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention. Our goals were to review the work and accomplishments of the now 3-year-old HathiTrust, and chart its future governance and priorities. Before the group were seven different ballot proposals that had been submitted by HathiTrust partners ahead of the meeting. On a beautiful autumn weekend, the delegates headed indoors, gathered around tables, and deeply engaged in the proceedings and discussion.

As a result of these proceedings, HathiTrust:

  • Will establish a governance structure consisting of a Board, a Board Executive Committee, and Board-appointed committees, and will articulate bylaws
  • Will formalize a transparent process for inviting, evaluating, ranking, launching and assessing development initiatives
  • Will establish a shared print monograph archiving program among the member libraries
  • Will expand and enhance access to U.S. federal publications including those issued by GPO and other federal agencies
  • Will develop and vet a fee-for-service model to allow contribution of content from non-partner entities

The Convention was also an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of HathiTrust in less than three short years: over 60 partners, infrastructure that preserves and makes discoverable close to 10 million volumes, and the HathiTrust Research Center that will enable new forms of research.

For a full account of the proceedings, please consult the official minutes of the Constitutional Convention.

HathiTrust's Past, Present, and Future

Submitted by hathitrust on October 17, 2011
Opening remarks given at the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention, October 8, 2011 (view presentation slides)
By John Wilkin, HathiTrust Executive Director

HathiTrust and Discovery

Submitted by hathitrust on June 24, 2011

By John Wilkin, Executive Director, HathiTrust

It is a core tenet of HathiTrust that preservation cannot take place without access. The coupling of preservation and access is both philosophically and strategically central to HathiTrust’s mission, as awareness of the materials in our collections helps to create the value that leads to preservation. And because discovery is integral to access, HathiTrust has worked hard on a multi-pronged strategy for discovery.