FAQ

Questions or comments? Please contact us using the Feedback Form!

More information about HathiTrust is also available in the California Digital Library HathiTrust FAQ. Please email hathitrust-info@umich.edu for inquiries regarding copyright permissions and partnership, or general questions about HathiTrust.

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General

What is HathiTrust?

HathiTrust makes the digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries available for all. HathiTrust was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections.

HathiTrust will quickly expand to include additional partners and to provide those partners with an easy means to archive their digital content.

What does the name HathiTrust mean?

Hathi (pronounced hah-tee) is the Hindi word for elephant, an animal highly regarded for its memory, wisdom, and strength. Trust is a core value of research libraries and one of their greatest assets. In combination, the words convey the key benefits researchers can expect from a first-of-its-kind shared digital repository.

How will researchers benefit?

HathiTrust will enable scholars to access a vast array of material, produce customized searches, and discover new information previously too difficult to access or to study side by side. HathiTrust will increase the value of these resources to scholarship by ensuring long-term access, by creating scholarly tools, and by improving the quality of the digitized content over time.

Researchers will benefit from the expert curation and consistent access they have long associated with research libraries, but instead of having to search across each institution’s repository, they will benefit from a shared collection. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Are the materials open to everyone?

Works in the public domain in HathiTrust are open to all researchers—whoever and wherever they may be. Content in HathiTrust is discoverable through online search technologies within the repository and through Google, with no authentication, login, or password required. As it becomes possible to expand access to the materials through permissions or other agreements, other materials will be made available. HathiTrust has already been contacted by some rights holders wishing to provide broader access to their content.

The research collections of partner libraries, accumulated over centuries, represent a vast treasury of cultural heritage and investment in the broad public good of promoting scholarship and advancing knowledge.

What is the CIC?

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is the academic equivalent of the Big Ten, plus the University of Chicago. It includes the University of Illinois, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Penn State University, Purdue University and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Who's taking the lead?

The University of Michigan, Indiana University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California system, all highly regarded for their expertise in the areas of information technology, digital libraries, and project management, are leading the partnership effort through their expertise and financial commitment. All members of the CIC are founding partners.

Is HathiTrust only for content digitized by Google?

No! HathiTrust’s aspirations, at the very least, are to bring together all of the digitized books and journals held by libraries, to provide secure, long-term storage and (where possible) access, and to aid in larger preservation efforts for printed materials.

Is content in HathiTrust limited to books and journals? How does HathiTrust relate to my institutional repository?

Although HathiTrust intends to expand the function of the Repository beyond digitized book and journal content, and particularly to the types of information research libraries store in Institutional Repositories, the initial success of the Repository will depend on an effort focused on conventional book and journal content. Time and experience will guide how HathiTrust’s partners continue to evolve the Repository's capabilities.

What about the digitized material?

Content is growing daily. As of November 19, HathiTrust contains more than 4.6 million volumes, approximately 15 percent of which are in the public domain.

The institutions that have deposited content in HathiTrust to date include Indiana University, the University of California, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin.

HathiTrust is making bibliographic records for the public domain HathiTrust materials available so that institutions around the world can load them into their online catalogs, alerting users to the availability of these digitized volumes.

How does HathiTrust protect access to in-copyright works?

Access to materials in the repository is determined by 1) copyright law and 2) permissions granted by individual rights holders. Works that HathiTrust partners do not have rights to make available are not made available, or are made available under very limited circumstances (such as to certified users with disabilities who need to make use of a screen reader in order to access materials). The primary function of HathiTrust is long-term preservation, with access to materials secondary, and we make every effort to respect the rights of copyright holders and comply with copyright law. Our policy on copyright can be found at http://www.hathitrust.org/rights_management, and a detailed description of how we store and use rights information in determining copyright status is available at http://www.hathitrust.org/rights_database.

What options existed previously?

Print materials were previously housed in separate locations and connected only by online catalogs, inter-library loan policies, and reciprocal borrowing agreements. Digital collections, despite being online, reflected the same institutional "scatter." HathiTrust builds on the strong relationships of the CIC-with its longstanding history of fruitful cooperation—and extends the benefits of the digital age. With the introduction of HathiTrust, "we are all owners of all of it."

Potential partners

Who should become a partner?

Any research library with digital content or an interest in curation of digital content can become a partner. International partners are welcome. HathiTrust provides a platform for library directors looking for a straightforward solution to archiving their digital content. It also provides a solution to library directors who believe libraries have a responsibility to ensure their collections are broadly available and preserved.

What's the benefit to becoming a partner?

One of the great benefits to partners of joining HathiTrust is a no-worry, pain-free solution to archiving vast amounts of digital content. Your institution can rely on the expertise of other librarians and information technologists who understand your needs and who will address the issues of servers, storage, migration, long-term preservation.

Furthermore, you won’t have to invest in the hardware, management, maintenance or updates to the repository, or create your own service software (such as the page-turner). If you represent a library whose content is being scanned by Google, HathiTrust provides the infrastructure to get your own files online.

HathiTrust partners also have the ability to participate in the governance of HathiTrust, influencing policies and future directions. Institutions that have become partners by September 2010 and contributed content by March 2011 will participate in a Constitutional Convention that will reconfigure the governance, cost, and partnership models for HathiTrust.

How does HathiTrust compare to Google Book Search?

HathiTrust complements Google’s massive undertaking to digitize the world’s library collections. While both systems offer digitized books via the Internet, it is likely that HathiTrust will provide some content Google will not, such as digital collections unique to each institution, works from institutional repositories, and native born-digital materials.

HathiTrust also provides a new platform for the expert curation and consistent access long associated with research libraries. The trust and reliance developed over decades in providing essential print collections will extend to HathiTrust as a valued source for scholarly materials.

What about the Internet Archive?

HathiTrust is concerned with curating the collections of research libraries, regardless of who digitizes the content. HathiTrust already contains materials digitized by some of the partners, and some of the HathiTrust partners are also Internet Archive partners. In time, we hope that HathiTrust will bring together content from a wide range of digitization efforts, including the Internet Archive.

Is this an appropriate role for research libraries?

Absolutely. Creating a digital research library for the research community is the responsibility of research libraries. Its development will build on the established leadership of research libraries in information management, advance their shared missions of serving the intellectual needs of their communities, and help them direct the future growth of the digital landscape.

The activities of research libraries in the next five to 10 years will define the role of libraries in the digital age. The library community must now ensure that these collections not only retain their research value in a digital platform, but also realize their potential as users adjust their information needs and expectations.

What are the alternatives?

Research libraries with digital content can archive and store their own content. HathiTrust, however, offers the expertise and infrastructure required to archive and preserve vast amounts of digitized materials, and in so doing, leverage the combined resources of a community with shared goals.

Are partners charged a fee?

Partners will be charged a one-time start-up fee based on the number of volumes added to the repository, in addition to an annual fee for the curation of those volumes. HathiTrust is a non-profit extension of the research libraries that founded it, and as such does not seek to profit from this work. We hope that by sharing infrastructure and strategies, even highly secure and expert curation can be a cost-effective option for participants.

What if I want to restrict access to some of the material?

Some institutions, attracted foremost to the archiving benefits of HathiTrust, may restrict access to materials they do not want made available via the Internet. In this case, HathiTrust can also function as a "dark archive” while ensuring long-term preservation. Nevertheless, we hope to provide access to as much content as possible.

What's the governance of HathiTrust?

HathiTrust is administered by an Executive Committee that meets monthly and is guided by a Strategic Advisory Board that meets quarterly and works on a variety of issues ranging from finances to development priorities. Please see HathiTrust Governance for more information.

Access and Restrictions

Why is access to some items restricted?

Many works in our collection are protected by copyright law, so we cannot ordinarily publicly display large portions of those protected works unless we have permission from the copyright holder. Where we have the right to show page images of works, we will make every effort to do so. We are currently displaying works that are in the public domain (such as US works published before 1923), uncopyrightable works (such as works of the US government), or works where we have permission from the copyright holder. If we cannot determine the copyright or permission status of a work, we restrict access to that work until we can establish its status. Because of differences in international copyright laws, access is also restricted for users outside the United States to works published outside the United States between 1868 and 1909. See "What are the different Copyright statuses of items in HathiTrust, and what do they mean?" below for more information about this restriction. Please use the feedback form at the top of each page to let us know if our records are incorrectly restricting access to an item. For more information, see the page on HathiTrust Rights Management and the Access and Use Policy.

Will access to restricted material be available in the future?

Some works that are currently restricted may in fact be in the public domain. We have begun the (huge) task of investigating works published between 1923 and 1963 that were determined by initial automated methods to be in copyright. Whenever we can determine a particular work is in the public domain we will provide full access to it. In addition, if we receive permission from rights-holders to display the full-text, we will provide full access to those works. If you have information about the rights status of any of our restricted texts, please contact us using the feedback form at the top of each page.

Can I get special permission to see restricted material?

If you are a student at the University of Michigan with a disability that does not allow you to use printed books, special text versions of HathiTrust materials can be made available to you. Please see the Services for Students with Disabilities website for more information. HathiTrust is currently working on expanding these services to students at other institutions. We cannot otherwise make exceptions for viewing online copyrighted material. Physical copies can be viewed at the library that holds the original. Physical copies may also be borrowed through interlibrary loan arrangements with your local library.

What is the benefit of searching books that I'm not allowed to view due to restrictions?

Even for works that are fully protected by copyright, you can search within the text of the item to find out how many times a particular word or phrase appears. Doing so may help you decide whether you want to seek out a physical copy, or find a specific section or phrase if the physical copy is in-hand.

What are the different Copyright statuses of items in HathiTrust, and what do they mean?

HathiTrust maintains a database of every item in the Library and a corresponding rights status. Brief descriptions of the most common statuses are given below. Detailed descriptions of all statuses, with information about how they are determined and stored, are available on the HathiTrust Rights Database page.

Public Domain - In general, these are texts that are 1) US federal government documents 2) published in the US prior to 1923 or 3) published outside of the US before 1869. Volumes may be determined to be in the public domain for other reasons, however. See the link to the HathiTrust Rights Database page above for more information.
Public Domain only when viewed in the United States - Works published outside the US prior to 1909 are in the public domain; however, due to the variations in copyright law in countries outside the US, it is estimated that 1869 is the earliest date foreign works may still be under copyright. Therefore, users accessing the volume from US IP addresses will have access to the works published outside the US between 1869 and 1909; however, users with non-US IP addresses will not.
In-copyright - Texts that do not meet the criteria for Public Domain (e.g,. US post-1923 and not a government document) are treated as in-copyright.
Available to nobody; blocked for all users - Works that have restricted viewing access due to the presence of personal private information or a request to be taken down. This is typically a temporary status while an issue is resolved.
Available to everyone in the world - In-copyright Works that the University of Michigan has been given permission by the copyright holder to display on a broad basis. The scope of permission granted may restrict some use, such as not allowing the sale of reprints. Please send inquiries about individual volumes to mdp-help@umich.edu.
Undertermined copyright status - Instances where copyright status could not be determined by automatic processes from bibliographic data, copyright research is only partially complete, or an ambiguous, unclear, or otherwise time-consuming situation was encountered. Items with this status are treated as though they are in copyright.

Whom do I contact to discuss the rights status of a particular book?

Please use the feedback link at the top of each page, and we will address your questions. Any issues concerning copyright permissions for items will be addressed within a business day of notification. For more information, see the HathiTrust Take-Down Policy.

Searching and Viewing Books

How can I search HathiTrust?

There are 4 ways to search items in HathiTrust, which are all accessible from http://catalog.hathitrust.org:

Catalog Search: Search bibliographic fields such as Title, Author, Publication Date.
Full-text Search: Use keywords to search the full-text of all items in HathiTrust.
Collection Builder: Search inside a collection of materials that you or others have created
Single-volume Search: When viewing an item in PageTurner (see example), use keywords to search inside that volume alone.

Can I search the full-text of a subset of books?

Yes. In Collection Builder, you can search all the books in a private or public collection. See What can I do with my collection for more information on Collection Builder searching.

How do I conduct an advanced search?

The addition of advanced search is currently being explored but it is not yet available.

Is non-linguistic content searchable (such as graphs, charts, and photos or other images)?

Non-linguistic content is not searchable at the present time.

Are "wildcard" searches possible?

Yes. A "wildcard" search is formed by appending the asterisk character (*) to the end of the term. For example, "fond*" would find "fond," "fondest," "fondly," etc.

Do I need to use diacritics and accents in my search?

If the work is in a Latin alphabet with diacritical marks, it is not necessary to enter the character with diacritical marks. For example, you may enter "Émile," "émile," "Emile," or "emile" and a page containing any of these forms will be found.

Can I search items not printed in a Latin alphabet?

Yes. We are receiving text in some non-Western languages including as Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Other non-Latin languages will be supported in the coming years. Our goal is full international coverage.

What does "Page not available" mean?

This message is displayed in 3 cases:

Pages were missing from the library's print copy of the book. If a book does have a missing page, this generally means that two pages are missing, since publishers generally print on both sides of the page. So, if pages 81-82 of a book are missing, there should be two pages with the message "Page not available" between pages 80 and 83.
One or more pages were not scanned.
In some cases, Google will misidentify a page, leading them to believe that a page is missing when it is not. For example, if they misidentify p. 206 as "205" they will think p. 206 is missing. They will insert a page to display "Page not available," although there is no missing page. Please notify us using the feedback form if you believe that a page has been misidentified in this way.

What is the difference between page numbers and 'sequence numbers' within an item?

Sequence numbers indicate the order of the physical pages of the book, and they rarely match up with pagination, which is inserted by printers. The sequence numbers start with the very first image in the book, which is usually the front cover. Thus, the sequence number and the page number will rarely be the same. We have sequence numbers for all items, but some items may not have page numbers (items digitized early in Google's process, in particular, are lacking page number tagging).

Can I view the page with the search term highlighted on it?

Search terms are not highlighted on the page images, but for works we can show you, they are highlighted in the text view. Do your search in the box in the upper right-hand corner of the page display. You'll see your search terms highlighted on the search results page. Follow the link to a page or sequence number, change the format to text, and you will see the search term highlighted on the text view in the page display.

Can I "bookmark" certain pages or portions of a book? Can I create my own collection of book chapters from several books?

These are not features that we have available now, but we will be collecting requests as part of our development process. Please submit suggestions via our feedback form.

Do these books comply with accessibility standards for disabled users?

Our system conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, priority 1 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CORE-TECHS/>. The system can display each page either as an image or as text (although due to the limitations of Optical Character Recognition software the text may contain errors). Text is available one page at a time and is readable by screen readers. If you are aware of ways in which we can improve accessibility, please tell us how we can make it better. This page contains more information on the Hathi Trust Digital Library and accessibility: <http://babel.hathitrust.org/m/mdp/accessibility.html>.

Building Collections in Collection Builder

How do I build a collection?

Currently, the process is to add individual items to a collection from the HathiTrust Pageturner. You will see a box in the upper left corner of the Pageturner that prompts you to add the item you're viewing to a collection. You can add it to either an existing collection or you can create a new collection. Librarians and others wishing to create large collections should send an inquiry via the feedback button at the top of each page.

Can I save my collection if I'm not at the University of Michigan?

Yes. It is necessary to login to create a permanent collection, so if you do not have a University of Michigan uniqname, you will need to create a "friend" account. More information on Friend accounts can be found here: http://www.itd.umich.edu/itcsdocs/s4316/. Once your Friend account is set up, you will be able to log in and save your collection.

What can I do with my collection?

The main functionality available in a collection is the ability to search within it. You can search the full text of all books items saved in one of your collections. In addition, you can share your collections with others by making them public.

Can I search all items in the HathiTrust Digital Library?

Yes. Searching and faceted browsing of all items is available through the temporary beta Catalog. Full text searching of the entire library is available at this location as well.

Can I include items not in the HathiTrust Digital Library in my collection?

Not yet. Currently you can only add items to a collection from the HathiTrust Pageturner.

Printing/Downloading

I'd like to download the whole book. Can I get a PDF that contains more than one page?

When you select PDF under "view page as", you will receive a single-page PDF of the page currently displayed. There is significant overlap of volumes in HathiTrust and Google Book Search and if a book is "full view" in HathiTrust, it is possible that a PDF of the entire book can be downloaded from Google Book Search.

Can you send me a book (or more than one book) on a CD-ROM?

We cannot provide digital copies of these volumes.

Can I see statistics on how often a particular item is accessed?

Not currently. Aggregate statistics on HathiTrust usage are available at http://stats.umdl.umich.edu under HathiTrust. As with all of the statistics that the library collects, we do not collect personal information.

Where is the persistent URL for a book I'm viewing?

The persistent URL for each volume is displayed in the left sidebar when viewing an item. We use the "handle" form of persistent URLs.

How can I get a physical copy of something I'm viewing?

Click on the "Find in a library" link in the catalog or when viewing an item to find a copy at a library near you. If you do not have access to a nearby library or the item is not available locally, you may request it through Inter-library Loan. Check with your host or local library for details.

Scanning/OCR Quality

How do I report page images that are hard to read, missing, or otherwise problematic?

Please use the feedback form that is available at the top of each page to report any problems you encounter. For problems that are found in images digitized by Google: Google is continually improving the quality of the images and OCR it delivers to HathiTrust partners. Over time we will be replacing low-quality scanned images with better ones.

Why is the text view for some books full of misspelled words? There are no misspellings in the original.

The searchable text of these volumes is produced through a process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR software "reads" the page images and makes a best guess at identifying the letters and words on a page. This is an automated process, subject to error, particularly if the original printing or the scan is of poor quality, if the printed fonts are difficult to read, or if the text is lightly printed. Even the best quality OCR usually contains an error or two per page. While this does not usually cause significant problems with searching, it does mean that the OCR text is not a faithful reproduction of the printed (or scanned) original.

Does the quality of scanned images effect the way they can be searched?

Even poorer quality texts will be searchable but they are more prone to OCR errors and thus the ability to retrieve every occurrence of a term will be diminished. Text quality can be improved by improvements in OCR software and by human correction. We will incorporate better text whenever possible.

Can I submit corrected text for a page/title?

We do not yet have a system in place to accept corrected text. We hope to have one in place in the future since feedback and assistance from the user community will help us to improve quality.

Miscellaneous

How do I contact HathiTrust with suggestions?

HathiTrust is very interested in user feedback and in collecting suggestions for improving the repository. Please submit your comments through the feedback form at the top of every page. If you have questions about copyright, partnership, or general questions about HathiTrust, you have may also contact us at hathitrust-info@umich.edu.

What kinds of things will the HathiTrust Digital Library be able to do in the future?

We will be working on the functionality of the repository in the coming years. Our goals include better navigation of the books, supporting scholarly citation, and the ability to support computational research.

I don't see my question here. Where can I go for more help?

You can click on the Help link in the navigation bar when you are viewing an item, or submit a question through the feedback form at the top of every page.

Graphics credits

Remixed versions of Silk Icons created by Mark James used courtesy Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License.
Remixed versions of Fugue Icons created by Yusuke Kamiyamane used courtesy Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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