Serials Solutions to Enable Full-Text Search of the HathiTrust Collection from the Summon™ Service
"The HathiTrust collection today includes a significant, and growing, percentage of all the books contained within research libraries," said John Wilkin, executive director of HathiTrust and associate university librarian at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We believe the library community needs strong platforms that make the discovery of quality content in libraries’ collections as easy and compelling as commercial web alternatives. In making the HathiTrust searchable from the Summon discovery service, we are enabling users to easily and efficiently search the full text of the entire HathiTrust collection concurrent with their exploration of a library’s other collections. We see this significant step forward in discoverability aiding HathiTrust in ensuring the accessibility and long-term preservation of this vast record of cultural heritage and collected knowledge."
Soon researchers at any library with the Summon™ service will effectively search the full text of more than 8.4 million total volumes in the HathiTrust collection, including more than 4.6 million book titles and over 200,000 serials titles— nearly three billion pages. Once users locate the information they need using the Summon™ search box, they can access public domain materials directly from the HathiTrust, as well as be directed to the digital and physical content in the collections of their respective libraries.
Designed by Serials Solutions, a unit of ProQuest, with a no-compromise commitment to meeting the comprehensive discovery needs of today’s scholars and researchers, the Summon™ service provides users with a simple and compelling starting point to search the full breadth of a library’s content. Already adopted by more than 200 academic and research libraries worldwide, the Summon™ service delivers proven value to the library with a measurable impact on the use of resources.
"This collaboration with HathiTrust is a significant milestone for libraries, emphasizing their centrality to the research process," said Marty Kahn, CEO of ProQuest. "HathiTrust's work of bringing the expansive print collections of libraries into the digital environment of today's researchers is truly monumental. With this agreement, Serials Solutions and HathiTrust bring the promise of that accomplishment into the hands of the library and its users."
Researchers will see considerable benefits from this agreement. From aggregation of information to collaboration across the research process, the ability to search the full text of any document preserved in the HathiTrust collection, as well as their library's other collections, will unlock new possibilities for discovering material in a range of resources, including books.
As an example, the collaboration between HathiTrust and Serials Solutions will significantly impact the digital humanities, which involves the investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. For instance, with the ability to quickly and easily search the full text of books for a specific word or phrase over a given period of time, researchers will glean new insights and do in-depth analysis that was extremely difficult and time consuming to do…until now.
About HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org)
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is an international community of research libraries committed to the long-term curation and availability of the cultural record. Member institutions from the United States and Europe are focused on a common goal: to contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge. Fifty-two institutions are now members, including the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and university libraries at the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Stanford, and the University of California.
About Serials Solutions
Serials Solutions® is the global leader in essential discovery and e-resource management solutions which are powered by a comprehensive knowledgebase. Its popular suite of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions helps improve access to and use of collections, eases librarian workloads, and ultimately reduces operating costs. Solutions include: the world-class Summon™ web-scale discovery service, providing instant access to the full breadth of the library's collection through a single search; the AquaBrowser® discovery layer, making navigation more accessible; 360, the only integrated e-resource access and management solution; KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative e-resource knowledgebase and foundation for Serials Solutions 360; and Ulrich’s™, the world's most authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information for serials and the most comprehensive source of print and electronic serials data available. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Serials Solutions is a member of the ProQuest® family of companies.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest’s massive information pool is accessible through the all-new ProQuest® platform, which moves beyond navigation to empower researchers to use, create, and share content—accelerating research productivity.
This energetic, fast-growing organization includes the Summon™ web-scale discovery service, the new ProQuest Dialog™ service, and business units ebrary®, Serials Solutions®, RefWorks-COS™, and Bowker®.