Jan. 14, 2016

Three million more library resources now available on campus

University doubles its collection through partnership with HathiTrust Digital Library
The University of Calgary's participation in HathiTrust Digital Library doubles the collection available to the campus community, giving students and scholars access to three million additional library resources.

The university's participation in HathiTrust Digital Library doubles the collection available.

Dave Brown, University of Calgary

Students, faculty, researchers and staff at the University of Calgary now have instant access to millions more library resources. The university’s collection has doubled due to participation in HathiTrust, a partnership of academic and research institutions that offers digitized titles from the collections of major research universities.

“HathiTrust will play a key role in advancing research and scholarship at the University of Calgary,” says Tom Hickerson, vice-provost (libraries and cultural resources). “Because of the increasing range of materials from digitized sources, students and scholars today have access to more resources than ever before.”

Materials can be downloaded to mobile devices 

Previously, University of Calgary students and scholars could view HathiTrust materials but could not download items or perform digital text analysis. University of Calgary Information Technologies (UCIT) played a key role by implementing the Shibboleth authentication system necessary for fully functional HathiTrust access. 

HathiTrust contains digital resources from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive as well as content digitized locally by major research libraries. Materials may be downloaded to mobile devices and HathiTrust Research Centre makes tools available for text mining and analysis.

Library's resources now comparable to those at older universities

“The titles in HathiTrust are earlier publications that add great depth to the collections of a young institution such as the University of Calgary,” says Hickerson. “This collection will grow substantially every year, and it makes our overall library resources comparable to the collections established at our older peer institutions across the country.”

Books and journals cover a range of subjects: history; visual arts; English and American literature; general literature; French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literature; Asian, African and Oceanic languages; industries, land use and labour; sociology and political science.

Scholars and students can build personal collections online

HathiTrust books and journals can be searched using the search box on the Library home page or by searching HathiTrust directly. Scholars and students can also build personal collections online and view and download resources with mobile devices.

To download entire titles, sign in to HathiTrust with your UCID through the university’s Central Authentication Service. Access to the advanced tools of the HathiTrust Research Centre requires creation of an additional ID and 15-character password.