New: HathiTrust Update: October 2011 Now Online

Direct to October 2011 Update ||| PDF Version
Here are a Few (ONLY A FEW) Highlights From the Update:

• “Maliaca Oxnam, an Associate Librarian from the University of Arizona, and current Chair of the Technical Report Archive and Image Library (http://www.technicalreports.org), has engaged a sabbatical research project with the goal of improving access to government documents in HathiTrust.”

• Overview Flowchart Showing Procedure Currently HT is Using to Determine Orphan Works

• “The Orphan Works Project (OWP) is in a pilot phase that will continue through the end of December. Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of California – Los Angeles are conducting a parallel review of approximately 680 volumes in HathiTrust that do not have readily identifiable publisher contacts. Michigan staff have made significant changes to the research process and project tools in order to improve the rigor and reliability of investigation following a reevaluation of the orphan works candidate identification process in October…Michigan staff will add more extensive documentation in the coming months. The pilot phase of the OWP is intended to serve as a test for an orphan works identification process, through which we will document examples and further define parameters for research.”

• “Ingest rates for Google-digitized volumes from all Google partner libraries were low in October due to problems with Google’s download mechanism. Rates are expected to pick up in November.”

• “HathiTrust began ingest of Internet Archive-digitized content from Duke University and the University of North Carolina in October, and worked with the University of Florida toward ingest of its IA-digitized volumes.”

• IMLS Quality Grant-“Data collection on the second sample of 1,000 volumes in HathiTrust continued in October; nearly 80% of the sample was reviewed by month’s end. October also saw the launch of the official grant project website, available at http://hathitrust-quality.projects.si.umich.edu/. The website features an overview of the project and detailed status reports by quarter, from the project’s beginning in January 2011 to the present.”

• “Full-text Search-University of Michigan staff re-indexed the full-text search index to add additional bibliographic metadata, including title information that will enable title displays in full-text search results to match those in the bibliographic catalog. Staff also continued work on advanced search, prototyping several designs for the user interface and working to improve relevance ranking of results. Staff expect to release the advanced search feature in November.”

Coming November 2011:

• “Complete HathiTrust user personas”

• “Release results from first 1,000-volume quality review sample”

• “Release full-text advanced search feature”

• “Begin testing new mechanisms for throttling”

Access the Complete HathiTrust Update (October 2011)

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