Working Groups and Committees

HathiTrust employs a number of committees and working groups, some of which are standing and have long-term appointments, while others may be devoted to finite tasks with a specific timeline. In general, the Executive Director, in coordination with the Executive Committee, appoints committees and working groups with an operational focus, while the Strategic Advisory Board appoints committees and working groups with a planning or exploratory focus. SAB committees and working groups make recommendations that are reviewed by the SAB and often subsequently the Executive Committee, and these recommendations, when approved, may call for subsequent implementation either by existing operational groups or newly established ones.

Executive Director/Executive Committee

Active Working Groups

• Usability Working Group (July 2010): The Usability Working Group works with other HathiTrust operational initiatives to guide usability and design efforts in a way that is intended to ensure consistency (where appropriate) and awareness of previous or parallel work. View the full charge and membership [1].

• Communications Working Group (May 2010): The Communications Working Group is a standing working group assigned with responsibility for shaping the HathiTrust message. Responsibilities range from the specific (e.g., press releases) to the broad (e.g., helping to convey information on content and quality to scholarly audiences). View the full charge and membership [2].

• User Support Working Group (March 2011): The User Support Working Group responds to inquiries of all kinds received through HathiTrust's public email address and user interfaces. View the full charge and membership [3].

Previous Working Groups

• Collaborative Development Environment Working Group (June 2009 - November 2010): The Collaborative Development Environment working group was assembled to support distributed development of tools and applications in HathiTrust, both to serve the particular needs of local campuses and to improve centralized repository functionality and reporting capabilities.

Working group members include Stephen Abrams (California Digital Library), Albert Bertram (University of Michigan), Lynne Cameron (California Digital Library), Kaylea Champion (University of Chicago), Stephanie Collett (California Digital Library), Steve DiDomenico (Northwestern University), Bill Dueber (University of Michigan), Mike Durbin (Indiana University), Phil Farber (University of Michigan), Paul Fogel (California Digital Library), Eric Hetzner (California Digital Library), Sebastien Korner (University of Michigan), John Kunze (California Digital Library), David Loy (California Digital Library), Andy Mardesich (California Digital Library), Mairéad Martin (Pennsylvania State University), Jon Miller (University of Chicago), David Minor (San Diego Supercomputer Center), Bill Parod (Northwestern University), and Cory Snavely (University of Michigan). Reports on the working group's activities are available in the HathiTrust monthly updates [4].

• Storage Working Group (July 2009 - January 2010): This short-term working group was charged with exploring the value of adding a third instance of storage to HathiTrust’s infrastructure. The group weighed benefits against costs and provided a final report (linked below) to the HathiTrust Executive Committee.

• HathiTrust Third Instance Recommendations [5]

• HathiTrust Third Instance Decision Factors [6]

Membership of the group included Stephen Abrams, California Digital Library (co-chair), John Kunze, California Digital Library (co-chair), Luc Declerck, University of California San Diego, Rob Lowden, Indiana University, David Minor, University of California San Diego, and Cory Snavely, University of Michigan.

• Research Center Working Group (July - November 2009): This working group was assembled to explore the needs and requirements of establishing a Research Center for HathiTrust, allowing users to perform computational analysis on materials in the digital library. As a result of the group's work, an RFP for building and sustaining a HathiTrust Research Center [7] went out in January 2010.

Working group members included Steven Abney (University of Michigan), Jack Bernard (University of Michigan), Geoffrey Fox (Indiana University), David Goldberg (University of California Irvine), Robert McDonald (Indiana University), Qiaozhu Mei (University of Michigan), John Ober (California Digital Library), Beth Plale (Indiana University), Scott Poole (University of Illinois), Sarah Shreeves (University of Illinois), and John Unsworth (University of Illinois). The group was coordinated by Kat Hagedorn, with project support provided by Jeremy York from HathiTrust.

Strategic Advisory Board 

Active Working Groups and Committees

• Collections Committee (July 2010): This standing committee is charged with responsibility for establishing strategic directions related to the collection, including collection building and management of the collection. View the full charge and membership [8].

• Surrogates Working Group (April 2010): The SAB formed this group to make recommendations related to the complex issue of substitute or surrogate volumes offered by Google to partner libraries. A full charge and explanation of the problem [9] are available.

• Quality, Ingest, and Error Rate Working Group (July 2009): The Quality Working Group has been given a finite charge to make recommendations surrounding the quality threshold HathiTrust uses to limit ingest of Google-digitized materials that are of poor quality. The key components of the charge are to a) develop a set of quality principles for HathiTrust, b) monitor quality control as related to user experience, c) track developments in a separate quality working group established by Google and Google library partners following the Google partner summit in October, and d) evaluate HathiTrust practices with regard to thresholding or limiting ingested content.

Members of the group include Paul Fogel (California Digital Library, Paul Soderdahl (University of Iowa), and Bryan Skib (University of Michigan).

• Full-text Search Subgroup (October 2010): The full-text search subgroup was introduced to shape and make recommendations on the future development of HathiTrust's full-text search. In March 2011 the subgroup complete an in-depth analysis [10] of potential features for full-text search. View membership and charge [11].

Previous Working Groups

• Discovery Interface Working Group (April 2009-June 2011): This group was first formed to shape the implementation of a HathiTrust catalog to be created in partnership with OCLC. Subsequent work  involved shaping a next stage for HathiTrust’s large-scale full-text search.

Members of the working group included John Butler (University of Minnesota), Bill Carney (OCLC), Suzanne Chapman (University of Michigan), Kevin Clair (Pennsylvania State University), Lee Conrad (University of Wisconsin), Lisa German (Pennsylvania State University), Julia Lovett (University of Michigan), Patti Martin (California Digital Library), Jon Rothman (University of Michigan), Christopher Walker (Pennsylvania State University), and John Wilkin (University of Michigan).

The working group  produced a draft vision for HathiTrust discovery [12] beyond the phase one catalog implementation work.