Print Holdings FAQ

HathiTrust recommends you thoroughly document your current process for exporting holdings in order to mitigate any effects from staff turnover. If you are planning a system migration and want to send updated print holdings prior to the cutover, please contact HathiTrust at support@hathitrust.org.

General

Why do you need print holdings information from my institution?

We use member-provided print holdings information to calculate annual fees, inform HathiTrust collection management, to provide access to in-copyright materials when permitted by law, and to support the HathiTrust Shared Print Program.

What happens to the metadata we submit?

Under HathiTrust Digital Library’s (HTDL) Metadata Sharing Policy, independent users, member institutions, and other third parties are free to harvest (for example, through our OAI feed or the HathiFiles), modify and/or otherwise make use of any metadata contained in HTDL unless restricted by contractual obligations residing with the parties that have contributed the metadata (“Depositing Institutions”) to HTDL. HathiTrust cannot be aware of every contractual obligation incumbent upon Depositing Institutions and as such makes no warranties on data made available through any of its several sharing mechanisms.

Print Holdings Records — General

Do you want holdings for everything in our collection?

Please provide print holdings information for all printed books and book-like materials in your collection that a) have OCLC numbers, and b) are cataloged as a single unit. This includes pamphlets, manuscripts, music scores, and bound newspapers and serials.

Please exclude ebooks and other non-print formats, as well as archival formats such as microform.

Do you need records at the title level or the volume/item level?

For Single-Part Monographs (SPMs) and Multi-Part Monographs (MPMs), we need print holdings records at the volume level.

For Serials, we need records at the title level.

Do you need records for multiple copies of the same item?

Yes. Please include records for all copies of duplicate print items you hold. This helps us accurately assess member holdings for fee calculation purposes and allows you to indicate separate holdings and condition statuses for each volume.

Do we need to report holdings for withdrawn items?

Yes. We count withdrawn items as holdings. We use this data to provide lawful access to in-copyright materials in your collection, including the Emergency Temporary Access Service.

Print Holdings Records — Technical

Do we need to provide enumeration/chronology for all records?

We need enumeration/chronology information for Multi-Part Monographs (MPMs), but not for Serials or Single-Part Monographs (SPMs).

We recently migrated to a new ILS. Do you need us to provide a mapping of our old local system IDs to the ones in our new system?

Changes in local IDs have no impact on HathiTrust print holdings processing or fee calculation. If your institution participates in our Shared Print program, we may need you to provide a mapping file.  Please contact us at support@hathitrust.org for next steps.

What file formats will you accept?

We require plain text files with .tsv as the file extension. Each field should be tab delimited, and each record should appear on a new line.

Can I send you a .csv file? What about excel?

No. Commas are acceptable only as separators within the OCLC field. Please submit your print holdings as tab-delimited .tsv files. Excel files are particularly troublesome.

Can I send you our holdings in one file?

Yes.  See the documentation at HathiTrust Print Holdings for details.

Can I send holdings information for single-part and multi-part monographs in the same file?

Yes.  See the documentation at HathiTrust Print Holdings for details.

How should our print holdings files be named?

Please name your files as follows:

<member_id>_<item_type>_<update_type>_<date>(_rest).<file_ext>(.compression)

A list of the complete file naming protocol and types is located in the documentation at HathiTrust Print Holdings

Examples:
test_mono_full_20210530.tsv

test_mono_full_20210603_ocnfix_version2.tsv.gz

Submission

Where do I upload the files once they’re ready?

Please upload your files to the Dropbox folder for your institution. If you need the link to your specific folder, please contact us at support@hathitrust.org.

My Dropbox credentials aren’t working. What should I do?

Please contact us at support@hathitrust.org. We’ll be glad to assist you.

We’re using a new ILS and don’t know how to generate print holdings files. Can you help?

Within the HathiTrust community, we are fortunate to have expertise among our membership regarding ILS migrations. Get in touch with us at support@hathitrust.org and we’ll point you to our community experts.