Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Tuesday's Tip: the Hathi Trust Digital Library

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Check out the holdings on the Hathi Trust Digital Library site (www.hathitrust.org). 

The "About" page says:

"HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide."

Here is the home page of the site (www.hathitrust.org):



There are two search fields on the screen above - the one on the left is for a "Catalog Search" (information about the items) and the one in the middle is for a "Full-text Search" (words that occur within the items).  I put the name "peregrine white" in the "Full-text Search" field on the screen above, and saw:


The first match is the only one that looks to be of interest - and it's a book that I have not seen before.  I clicked on the "Full View" link and saw:


The "Full View" provides several ways to view the document - a "Classic view," a "Scroll" view, a "Flip" view, a "thumbnail" view, and a "Plain text" view.  I am in the "Scroll" view in the screen above.   In the "Scroll" view, the user can use the scroll bar on the right (or the mouse scroll wheel) to move up and down within the document.The user can zoom in or out, and rotate the page images, using the controls above the image.  The user can use the back and forward page, or the first page and last page, controls to navigate within the book. 

Some of the books and documents on the match list are "Full View" and some are "Limited view," which means that you can see the page numbers where your search terms appear, but cannot see the actual page.  This "Limited view" can provide leads so that the user can find the book or document in a repository.

There may be documents and books in this collection that are different from those in Google Books, the Internet Archive, and other online book digital collections.  Check it out!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/tuesdays-tip-hathi-trust-digital-library.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver


1 comment:

Celia Lewis said...

Very nice, Randy - a new site to me. I think I might have heard of it before, but - brain like a sieve! Thanks. My ex-husband's family descend from Resolved White, and that book you showed caught my eye. Cheers.