University of Arkansas Libraries Join HathiTrust

The University of Arkansas Libraries have joined HathiTrust, a non-profit global collaborative of more than 200 research and academic libraries with a mission of ensuring that the cultural record is preserved and accessible in the future. The U of A campus will benefit from an increase in digital resources as well as enhanced accessibility. Specialized features facilitate access by persons with print disabilities and allow users to gather subsets of the digital library into collections that can be searched and browsed. 

"HathiTrust is the closest thing we have to a national digital library," said Angie Ohler, associate dean for Content and Digital Initiatives. "A collaborative effort across the world's largest research and academic libraries, the worth of its combined collection is invaluable. It can be difficult to appreciate the merits of investment in community endeavors such as this until the unimaginable happens, as it did in March of 2020, when academic campuses and libraries around the world shut down. HathiTrust member libraries were quickly and easily able to offer their patrons digital versions of print works that were otherwise inaccessible during the pandemic."   

HathiTrust holds the largest set of digitized books managed by the academic, research and library community. Over the last 12 years, members have contributed more than 17.4 million volumes to the digital library. U of A users will be able to view and download full-text PDF files of all public domain and Creative Commons-licensed volumes in HathiTrust, of which there are currently more than 6.9 million for U.S. users. For all volumes, including copyrighted works, the full text is searchable within the digital library and available for advanced research and data mining services via the HathiTrust Research Center.  

"Our membership in HathiTrust opens an extensive corpus of digitized books to the faculty and students of the U of A," said Jason Battles, dean of Libraries. "These books cover a wide range of topics, making them applicable for researchers in a host of disciplines and programs. We are excited about this considerable expansion to the collection of the University Libraries." 

Lora Lennertz, data librarian for the U of A Libraries, has authored the research guide Getting Started with HathiTrust to help users familiarize themselves with this resource. Lennertz will offer free, virtual training sessions next month for those interested in learning how to use HathiTrust. The first session, Introduction to HathiTrust, is set for 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. March 4. This workshop will provide information on the U of A's membership in HathiTrust as well as instruct on the basics of using HathiTrust for locating items and creating collections. The session Basic Text Mining with HathiTrust is set for 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Friday, March 11, and will provide a hands-on demonstration of the out-of-the box research analytics that are available for text mining.