HathiTrust WorldCat Local Discovery Tool

Today, OCLC and HathiTrust announced the release of a WorldCat Local-based interface for the HathiTrust Digital Library, currently containing more than 4 million records.  The discovery interface is available at http://hathitrust.worldcat.org and will be updated on a regular basis. (Links to HathiTrust materials have been available in the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot for several months.)

The catalog was created by OCLC with the guidance and advice of the HathiTrust Discovery Interface Working Group. Members include John Butler (University of Minnesota), Bill Carney (OCLC), Suzanne Chapman (University of Michigan), Kevin Clair (Pennsylvania State University), Lee Konrad (University of Wisconsin), Lisa German (Pennsylvania State University), Julia Lovett (University of Michigan), Patti Martin (California Digital Library), Jon Rothman (University of Michigan), Christopher Walker (Pennsylvania State University), and John Wilkin (University of Michigan). (Adam Brin, formerly of CDL, also participated in this project.)

The working group also drafted a charge document for its work on developing the HathiTrust Full Text Search. Some of the main goals of this project include charting a course of service refinement to meet scholarly need; contextualizing each of HathiTrust’s search services through interface design and presentation; recommending pathways from HathiTrust search to other services essential to patterns of scholarly workflows; and evaluating the effectiveness of HathiTrust full-text search. The group is currently working on outlining a timeline and strategy for these efforts, as well as the full-text search membership.

See OCLC’s press release.