NYPL Digital Gallery

Annunciation and Beginning of Hours of the Virgin, 1544

Launched in 2005, the New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Gallery houses more than 700,000 digital images organized into more than seventy curated collections.  The impressive gallery includes rare prints, photographs, illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, and vintage posters among other items. Expert curators from the many departments of NYPL nominate images to be included in the gallery.

Textile Design by Gaston Charlet, 1925

The major browsing categories include Arts & Literature, Cities & Buildings, Culture & Society, History & Geography, Industry & Technology, Nature & Science and Printing & Graphics. At the item level, each image is individually tagged to allow for browsing by Subjects, Names, and Library Division to enable the easy discovery of similar images. From each image you may also link to the collection guide and to any collections to which the image belongs. The subjects and names tags are clearly an adaptation from traditional cataloging, and the contents of the actual card catalog record is provided for many of the images.

Écureuils by M.P. Verneuil, 1897

Overall, the NYPL Gallery’s adaptation of subject headings and names to the Web works well, and allows for cross-referencing and easy discovery. However, lengthy subject headings and names listed with last name, comma, first name will always feel awkward on the Web. There are also cases in which the adaptation does not work so well as in the case of the beautiful image of a “sea monster” (see and click image below) which is not tagged with the subject “Sea Monsters” (even though this subject exits in the Gallery). Subject and name tags also become confusing in the case of authors and creators, many of whom have both subject and name tags assigned to them. However, NYPL does provide brief explanations to help users distinguish the difference.

Bird's Eye View of New Orleans, 1851

The Digital Gallery has a number of useful features that allow users to customize their experience. First, you can easily create your own collection of favorite images by clicking the “select” icon located above any image you choose to include. Second, you can select the number of images (from 1 to 60) you want to see displayed in search results and choose to see the details displayed with each image or not. To make these changes, go to any page other than the home page and click “change display” at the very top above the red search bar. No registration is required to use these features.

International by A. P. Apsit, 1917-1921

The Image Gallery archives high resolution versions of each image. Copies of the high resolution versions may be purchased for all types of use, including personal, editorial, creative, and commercial.  Each image is also available for free download in two low resolution formats which may re-used for non-commercial purposes.  However, the NYPL cannot guarantee that the free versions of the images don’t have rights connected to them (copyright and/or privacy rights) and figuring out potential rights and seeking permission for use is up to the user.

Adventures of Shôchan, 1923

The NYPL Gallery’s revenue model (providing free low-resolution versions for non-commercial use while allowing users to purchase high-resolution versions for personal and commercial uses) is popular for digital image libraries. Or it is in theory: I’ve heard many discussions about the potential for this revenue model. But I don’t know if it has actually been implemented a lot, and I don’t know how successful it is when it is implemented.

Sea Monster by Edward Donovan, 1802-1808

Hoping to learn if their revenue model has been successful, I used the excellent Ask NYPL service and emailed an inquiry to a NYPL librarian. Within a week, I received an answer which I was told I could share: First, NYPL is very proud of its digital gallery (as they should be!) and the fact that they are able to present their many images to the public for free; And second, the proceeds from licensing fees covers the salaries of staff who digitize the images, but they do not offset the larger costs (even closely!) of digitizing the enormous number of images that the NYPL continues to digitize and make available to the public.

Sport Model Roadster, 1907

While the overall quality of the NYPL Digital Gallery is excellent, there are a couple of weaknesses. There is no separate field for year or date in the metadata for individual images. I believe this is a problem with the underlying metadata–some items simply have no dates and some have a range of dates–and is something that is likely impossible to correct given the vast size of the gallery. However, this missing element makes it difficult to sort search results or browse by year (a function which would be extremely useful given the size of the collections). Another issue is that a few of the images have a special zoom feature that allow you to look closely at any part of the image, but most do not. It would be useful if the zoom feature could be expanded to more of the images, particularly all of the maps.

Map of Asia, 1603

The potential for discovery in the NYPL Digital Gallery is endless.  Here are a just a few of the many beautiful and interesting things I found while researching this post:

• Wonder book for girls & boys
• Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan
• Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, 1851-1930
• Walt Whitman Manuscripts
• The Natural History of British Fishes…
• Russian and Ukrainian posters, 1917-1921
• America a Prophecy by William Blake
• Subject: decoration ornament — animal forms
• Winnie the Pooh Stuffed Animals
• Les modes féminines du XIXe siècle, 1801-1900
• Changing New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, 1935-1938

NYPL Digital Gallery Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Digitized images from NYPL collections
Scope	Mostly historical images from many parts of the world. Metadata and interface are in English only.
Media Type	Images, photographs, maps, prints, manuscripts
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦ ♦ Over 700,000 images and growing
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Images are nominated for inclusion by expert curators
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦ The tools are adequate but including the zoom feature on more items (particularly maps) would be helpful.
Asset Reusability	♦ ♦ ♦ Low-resolution Images may be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes. However, some images may have third party rights and image users are required to determine potential rights issues and contact third parties themselves.
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ Metadata is strong but lacks consistent field for year or date.
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦ Browsing options to find related images are excellent. Names and Subjects lists are a bit awkward.
Search functionality	♦ ♦ Regular and advanced search are provided, but the advanced search is challenging to use effectively.
Overall Design	♦ ♦ ♦ Site design is attractive and easy to use, and some elements may be customized by the user.
iPhone Navigation	♦ ♦ ♦ The Web interface works remarkably well on an iPhone. However, it’s helpful to know your way around before using it via iPhone.

Public Library of Science: Open Access Scientific and Medical Research

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit open access publisher of academic research in science and medicine. But PLoS uses the web to distribute their publications freely, which means they are also a digital library.

PLoS began full operation on October 13, 2003 with their first journal: PLoS Biology. PLoS currently publishes six additional peer reviewed journals for fields including medicine, computational biology, genetics, pathogens, and neglected tropical diseases. Another journal, PLoS ONE, contains multiple research topics. There is also a Hub which collects clinical trial research, and a Hub for biodiversity research will be launched later this year.

PLoS’ mission is to “Open the doors to the world’s library of scientific knowledge by giving any scientist, physician, patient, or student – anywhere in the world – unlimited access to the latest scientific research.” To help readers learn more about the benefits of open access and the PLoS’ mission, a series of one-minute videos featuring the insight of different types users, including Librarian Diana Graves are available (and worth watching!).

Komodo Dragon Stalks Its Pray

To help fund PLoS’ open access paradigm, authors whose research survives PLoS’ rigorous selection process are required to pay for publication (between $1,350 and $2,900 depending on the journal). However, once published on PLOS an author’s work is freely available to anyone in the world with Internet access. (If an author cannot pay the cost of publication, the fee is waived, and most fees are covered by the institution supporting an author’s research). Funding is also provided by memberships, sponsors, and contributions.

The recent outcry by UC librarians over price hikes by Nature Publishing Group underscores the need for alternative publishing methods. While all forms of serious publishing are costly, a form in which the cost is paid once up front (like PLoS’) rather than than over and over again by separate users makes a lot of sense, especially in a field which is international in scope and receives so much public funding to begin with.

5000 Year Old Shoe

Within a PLoS journal, each article comes equipped with its own article-level metrics that allow readers to determine its popularity and reach. Anyone is allowed to create an account on PLoS, and once you have an account you are allowed to write comments and annotate text within an article. You may also respond directly to the comments of other readers. PLoS has successfully created an online environment which allows for scientific discussion and debate around each and every article. Account holders may also rate articles and request a staff review of comments or ratings they believe to be inappropriate. User comments and ratings are not anonymous but link to the writer’s PLoS’ profile from which it’s pretty easy to determine legitimacy. PLoS’ article level metrics also include links for related content: similar articles published by PLoS, links to search results in Google Scholar and PubMed, and links to search results on a number of blog search sites.

Male Mice Sing an Ultrasonic Tune

The structure of scientific articles makes it easy to quickly discern an article’s topic, intent, research methods, and conclusion without having to do much actual reading. PLoS applies hyperlinks to this structure which makes browsing an article even faster.

PLoS provides many paths for readers into their content, including three blogs (PLoS and PLoS ONE Community and PLoS Medicine Community), Twitter feeds, Facebook presence, email alerts, and RSS feeds. The front page of each PLoS journal allows for browsing by recent research, featured discussions, the current issue, all issues (see “journal archive”), publication date, subject, and collection. The biology, medicine, and genetics journals also provide browsing by most viewed. And the biology and medicine journals feature weekly editor picks.

PLoS recently launched a new and improved search engine and search interface. The search box for the new search can be found on the top right hand corner of each journal and hub. The new search interface appears to be busy and complicated, but it allows users to quickly assess available resources and to easily expand or narrow search results. It is clearly intended for an academic audience, but with a little practice a lay user should be able to master it as well. Oddly, the former search engine is still available by clicking “Search” on the navigation bar on the plos.org homepage. The former search provides 2 options: search of all the journals or search only the plos.org homepage and blog. The former search option may look less intimidating to some users but ultimately it is not as powerful. Having two completely separate search engines on the site is confusing: the new search system should completely replace the old one, but the option to search only the homepage and blog is useful and should remain.

Fossil snake preserved within a sauropod dinosaur nesting ground

Almost everything about PLoS appears to be carefully thought out and well executed. However, the homepage does not live up to the rest of what PLoS accomplishes. I knew what PLoS did before I ever visited their homepage, which is a good thing: there is no immediate explanation of what PLoS does and there is nothing that captures my attention or reflects the excitement of the amazing resources they provide. No cool images are displayed above the fold and there is no search box. Many of the individual PLoS journals do a better job of making it immediately clear what they do, providing interesting images, and capturing attention. And they each display a search box. PLoS provides a multitude of amazing resources but they can be confusing to navigate: 7 journals, 1 hub (with another on the way), 3 blogs, and 3 separate types of search plus articles, discussions, and collections can be a lot for a reader to succesfully discover. A well designed homepage could do a lot to help quell confusion.

PLoS is a tremendous public resource and a shining example of what a digital library can accomplish. I am most impressed with the content itself and with the interactive tools PLoS has put in place to allow for discussion and debate around the content–but the value of the interactive tools depends on scientists, educators, and the interested public adopting them and using them well. Of the articles I looked at for this review (granted, only a small sample) many did not have reader comments, notes, or ratings. PLoS is still a new phenomenon and it may take time for people to feel comfortable enough to invest their time and energy online rather than in more traditional forums.

A Window on Maize Evolution

While PLoS already has three blogs which inform readers of changes and upgrades, highlight content, and create community, I think they should consider creating an additional blog aimed at science educators to highlight PLoS content and suggest ways of integrating it into classroom use for high schools and even middle schools. Opening the door to younger science students and getting them involved in reading and understanding scientific research would be a worthy additional goal.

Here’s a small sampling of articles published on PLoS:

• Sulforaphane Causes Epigenetic Repression of hTERT Expression in Human Breast Cancer Cell Lines
• Why Most Published Research Findings are False
• Which Single Intervention Would Do the Most to Improve the Health of Those Living on Less Than $1 Per Day?
• Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs by a New Snake from the Late Cretaceous of India
• Music to Her Ears? Male Mice Sing an Ultrasonic Tune
• Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
• First Direct Evidence of Chalcolithic Footwear from the Near Eastern Highlands
• A Window on Maize Evolution
• High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health
• Deathly Drool: Evolutionary and Ecological Basis of Septic Bacteria in Komodo Dragon Mouths

PLOS Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature
Scope	Articles published starting in 2003, in English
Media Type	Text (research articles)
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦           Close to 18,000 articles and growing
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   All articles are reviewed by scientific peers
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Each article comes with interactive tools for reader comments, notes, and ratings
Asset Reusability	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   All articles available for reuse under Creative Commons Attribution License
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Publication level metadata is provided for each article
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Multiple browsing options are provided for each PLoS journal
Search functionality	♦ ♦ ♦      Search functions well but multiple search engines are confusing
Overall Design	♦ ♦          Homepage lacks luster and clear organization
iPhone Navigation	♦ ♦          App available for PLoS Medicine and iPad App available for all PLoS journals

Calisphere: A Gateway to Primary Sources in California

La Muerte de Artemio Cruz, 1974 Credit: California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives

A rich resource for the study of history and culture in California, Calisphere has over 212,000 primary source items in its online collection, and includes search results for 588 websites belonging to the University of California. Images dominate the collection and include photographs, paintings, political cartoons, maps, and advertising. Texts including pages from diaries, letters, university memos, pamphlets, and newspaper articles  also make up a significant part of the collection.

The primary source items in Calisphere are selected by the many contributing institutions which include UC libraries and museums as well as cultural heritage organizations from across the state.

Ishi, 1911 Credit: Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Calisphere is a public service project of the CDL (California Digital Library) and is administered by the Digital Special Collections group. The group also administers the OAC (Online Archive of California) a free website which provides over 20,000 collection descriptions for materials housed physically at educational and cultural institutions across California. Calsiphere is a public-facing website which features digitized online collections; while OAC allows researchers to search for and locate physical collections (as well as the digital collections).

Free Church Benefit, 1969 Credit: Graduate Theological Union

Calisphere provides extensive resources to help California K-12 teachers integrate primary source materials into their curriculum. Primary source materials are gathered into themed collections which support California Content Standards. Themed collections may be browsed by time period; and an alphabetical list of terms selected from the California Content Standards may also be browsed. Individual web pages for California Cultures and JARDA (Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives) provide additional resources for educators and include lesson plans.

Roosevelt and Muir at Glacier Point, 1903 Credit: San Joaquin Valley Library System

Metadata is generally plentiful on Calisphere though you need to click around a bit to find it all. And solid browsing opportunities are provided for K-12 educators. However, Calisphere is passing up an excellent opportunity to integrate metadata with  browsing and search into a powerful user discovery experience. Currently, the metadata for a Calisphere item contains a hyperlink to the collection page (housed on the OAC) to which it belongs. Once you are on the collection page you can click to see all the other digitized items in the collection.

Red Rover Brand Credit: Riverside Public Library

This method of discovery is very useful and could be utilized by Calisphere to a much greater extent: More items in the metadata should be hyperlinked in a similar way. For instance, it would be helpful to click on an item’s date, subject, language, or type and be taken to a list of items which were tagged similarly. These lists can then be made available for browsing (for example an A-Z list of all the subjects would be useful) and they could also be used to filter search results in advance search (which Calisphere currently does not have). If such an integration were implemented, a user could easily pinpoint cartoons about a particular subject in a particular year, for example. It would also allow users to easily discover and filter all the items in Spanish.

Party in a Rowboat Credit: Bancroft Library

As someone who has spent most of my life in California, it is easy to get lost inside Calisphere’s engrossing collections. Conveniently, a Facebook page and a twitter feed are available to keep Calisphere fans abreast of new or interesting items in the collection.

Final note: I was not able to download images using Firefox browser, but I had no trouble downloading them using Internet Explorer.

Calisphere Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Primary sources reflecting the history and culture of California
Scope	Mostly English with some items in Spanish
Media Type	Photographs, images, documents, and websites
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦        201,206 images, 10,848 texts, 588 websites
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦   All items are carefully selected by contributing institutions
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦        The tools depend on the hosting institution: However, all items may be zoomed to see details. In some collections a book reader is needed to allow for consecutive reading of pages.
Asset Reusability	♦            Items are available for use in research, teaching, and private study only. For most items permission for publication must be sought from the holding institution as well as from the copyright holder.
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦       Solid metadata (at least at the collection level) is available for each item.
Browsing Options	♦ ♦        Browsing options are available for K-12 educators but there are few browsing options for the broader public.
Search functionality	♦ ♦        Lacks advance search or ways to refine search results
Overall Design	♦ ♦ ♦   The site is attractive and has a well-organized front page. It makes good visual use of the images it hosts.
iPhone Navigation	♦            Featured images and top search results may be viewed. It is not possible to scroll through search results. An App would be nice.

European Homepage for Hubble Space Telescope

Credit: ESA/Hubble

The European Homepage for NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope never refers to itself as a digital library. Yet it archives the awe-inspiring images and videos captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and offers them to the public to view and download for free. It also supplies press releases to explain the science behind the majority of the images and videos in its archive. It short, it is a remarkable digital library even though it does not use the term to refer to itself.

Credit: ESA/Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space observatory collaboration between ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA. It was launched and released into orbit (304 nautical miles above the Earth) in April 1990 via Space Shuttle Discovery. Because Hubble is placed above Earth’s light-distorting atmosphere, it is five times as powerful as the best Earth-based telescopes. And unlike Earth telescopes, Hubble is able to make observations in infrared and ultraviolet light. Thanks in part to Hubble’s observations, scientists now know that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, with an uncertainty of only 200 million years.

Credit: ESA/Hubble)

Check the news tab to find the latest news and photo releases. The image and video archives contain multiple formats and file sizes for each media item. The file sizes range from small and screen-sized to huge and HD broadcast quality. All files are available for free download. Most of the images and videos are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and may be shared and remixed as long as ESA/Hubble is clearly credited as the source.

Hubblecast, a vodcast series featuring science, news, and imagery from Hubble is available in the video archive. The episodes are from 3 to 11 minutes long, explore a single topic, and are comprehensible to non-astronomers. They are hosted by the charmingly geeky Dr. Joe Liske, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). You can download Hubblecast, watch it in various formats online, or you can use iTunes to download episodes to your iPod or iPhone.

Credit: ESA/Hubble

Many options for browsing the images and videos are available. You may browse by topic such as solar system, extrasolar planets, stars, nebulae, and spacecraft (among many others). Or you can cut to the chase and browse the Top 100 (images). You can also browse by special image types including wallpapers and zoomable. You can search the entire Hubble site and there is also a separate keyword search for both the image and video archives. Advanced search with very specific search fields is also available for images and videos.

The site’s design does not take full advantage of the visual nature of its content: the thumbnails are small–the amazing images should be much more in our face. Hubblesite, the American counterpart to the European Homepage for Hubble is more visually appealing; however, it is so jammed full of information that its visual qualities can be overwhelming. If you are interested in Hubble and the images it produces, you should definitely check out both sites.

Update May 24 2010: The site was significantly redesigned since I posted this in April. There is no longer an advanced search option. And the site is now much more visual with larger thumbnails. I am updating the ratings below to reflect the changes.

European Hubble Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Images, videos, and artists impressions featuring Hubble Space Telescope observations
Scope	1990 – Present; English language only
Media Type	Images and Videos
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦ ♦     2,853 Images / 706 videos and growing
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦  Images and videos are available in multiple formats and file sizes including broadcast quality and HD
Asset Presentation Tools	♦            No special presentation tools are provided, except zoom is available for some images.
Asset Reusability	♦ ♦ ♦     Most images and videos are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦        Metadata is inconsistent–while extensive information is usually available for each media item, simple elements such as date are often missing.
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦     Thumbnail browsing is available by topic, popularity, and some media types.
Search functionality	♦ ♦         2 types of search are provided
Overall Design	♦ ♦ ♦      The site design makes good use of the visual elements it hosts.
iPhone Navigation	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦  Hubblecast episodes are available for free via iTunes. And it is fairly easy to navigate the website using an iPhone.

International Children’s Digital Library

International Children's Digital Library

Created by a team of researchers at the University of Maryland, the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) was launched in November 2002. This makes it the oldest and most established digital library I have reviewed so far.

The goal of the ICDL is to provide a collection of 10,000 digitized childrens books in 100 languages. Currently there are 4,365 books in over 50 languages. The books are carefully selected according to a rigorous Collection Development Policy. The majority of the books in the collection are current and under copyright protection though there are a number of historical public domain books as well. To protect the copyrights of contributors, ICDL books and illustrations may not be downloaded or re-used.

ICDL: Simple Search Interface

A second goal of the ICDL project is to collaborate with children as design partners, and the benefits of this collaboration are clear: the Simple Search interface is bright, colorful, easy to use, and provides a number of unique browsing options. You can browse by the color of a book’s cover; by the type of characters (kids, real animals, or imaginary creatures); by picture books or chapter books; by age group (three to five, six to nine, or ten to thirteen); by true books or make believe books; and by length (short books, medium books, or long books. You can easily narrow your results by combining any of the browsing categories together, and also sort by language.

There are a few things that could be done to make Simple Search even easier to use: 1) make it easier to find from the home page; 2) add a search reset button to clear search results; and 3) add a button to return to search results from the Book Viewer. But overall, Simple Search is simple and fun to use.

ICDL: Book Overview

The Book Viewer is also colorful and easy to use. When you first open a book you see a Book Overview with a thumbnail view of every page which allows for easy selection of great illustrations. Once you click a page you want to read, you can easily choose to view one or two pages at a time, to make the page larger or smaller, and to move forward or backward through the book. To make viewing a book even more fun, you can click a button at the bottom of the book viewer to download two alternative Book Viewers: Comic or Spiral.

Simple Search combined with the Book Viewer and the collection of beautifully illustrated books, make reading books online on ICDL possibly more fun than in analog form–and an entire library is readily available to explore!

Simple Search is my favorite way to find books on ICDL, but there are many browsing options, including by country, by recently added books, by award winning books, by author and illustrator, and more. Search options include keyword search and advanced search.

Many of the books in this collection are absolutely gorgeous. Be sure and check out:
Otto the Spider (English, Croatian)
En La Costa (Spanish)
Blue Whale (Serbian)
Children Write for Peace (Hebrew, Arabic, English, German)
The Big Boasting Battle (English, Chinese [Simplified], Danish, Finnish, German, Italian, Portuguese)

If you find a gorgeous book using ICDL, please share it in a post.

ICDL Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Books for children ages 3 – 13
Scope	1518 – Present; Over 50 languages
Media Type	Illustrated Books
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦           4,365 books
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Books are carefully selected
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Easy to use and fun Book Viewer.
Asset Reusability	No downloading, printing, or further distribution of the books is allowed.
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦ ♦        Metadata is in the original language and translated into English
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦    Multiple browsing options are provided.
Search functionality	♦                Discovery is provided mostly by browsing rather than search.
Overall Design	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   Designed for audience of children, their parents, and educators.
iPhone Navigation	♦ ♦ ♦      2 free Apps available! ICDL App provides 4 stories; StoryKit App provides tools to create your own stories.

Hathi Trust Digital Library

Frankenstein, Hathi Trust Digital Library

Hathi Trust Digital Library was launched in October 2008 by 25 research libraries led by Indiana University and the University of Michigan. While most of the books and periodicals available in the library were digitized by Google as part of their massive digitization undertaking, Hathi Trust plans to include books digitized by the Internet Archive as well as other digitization initiatives.

As of December 2009, Hathi Trust included 5,327,346 volumes of which 764,481 are in the public domain and completely available for online reading. While the majority of books are protected by copyright and therefore are not available for viewing; full-text search, related search options, and the ability to discover which libraries near you own the volume are provided for each book.

Hathi is the Hindi word for elephant, and as befits an elephant’s capacity for great memory Hathi Trust’s primary function is long term preservation for the libraries’ digital materials. Access is a secondary function of the project, and yet the access provided is quite good!

Most of the books currently contained in Hathi Trust are also available through Google Books–so why use Hathi Trust when you could simply use Google? There are a few significant differences between Google Books and Hathi Trust. First, Hathi Trust only contains books selected by research libraries: if you are doing academic research your experience won’t be cluttered by every other type of book. Second, Hathi Trust provides an ad-free library exeperience. Third, Hathi Trust puts their library-quality metadata to use providing useful paths by which to narrow or broaden a search: Google does not. However, there are some advantages to using Google Books rather than Hathi Trust. First, Google provides snippets of text surrounding keywords with its search inside the book results for all books (Hathi Trust only includes this feature for public domain books). Second, Google sometimes has deals with publishers which allow them to provide access to pages or entire chapters of in-copyright books. And third, Google provides the ability to download the public domain books while Hathi Trust does not. A good research strategy might be to use Hathi Trust to locate books and then check each book in Google Books to see if additional viewing is allowed (for in-copyright books) or to download (for public domain books).

While Hathi Trust does not offer web browsing options (except for its user-created collections), it does put its thorough metadata to excellent use by allowing users to narrow or broaden their search results. The narrowing option is available on the right-hand side of the page next to results when using the Catalog Search (search by title, author, subject, or publisher). The broadening option is available on the Catalog Record page for each volume where hyperlinks for the author(s) and subjects lead to corresponding search results. In addition, a list of similar items is provided on the right side of the Catalog Record.

To get the best results for the narrowing option, it is important to experiment with using quotes around your search query as this may significantly change their relevance. Following the rules of a brick and mortar library, the best results are achieved for an author search by entering last name, comma, first name and then putting it in quotes. If you make the mistake of entering first name, last name and putting it in quotes, you may get zero results.

Hathi Trust also provides useful ways to sort search results. To see public domain titles only, check the “full view only” box next to the search box. Once you get to the results page, you can sort them by relevance, date (newest first or oldest first), or author.

Hathi Trust Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	University Research Library Collections
Scope	1586 AD – Present
Media Type	Books & Periodicals
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦ ♦      Over 5 million volumes total (includes 758,947 volumes with full public access) & growing
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦     Selected publications from select institutions
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦         Book viewer is efficient but lacks special features
Asset Reusability	♦              Full copies of public domain works are available to read online / may download one page at a time only
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦  Consistent, library-quality
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦      Useful options to narrow or broaden Catalog Searches are provided
Search functionality	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦   3 types of search available: 1) by author, subject, title, publisher, year   2) Full text search across all volumes   3) search inside a single volume
Overall Design	♦ ♦          Design may be confusing to navigate
iPhone Navigation	♦ ♦          With patience & perseverance may locate and read books. Needs an app.

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Animal Artisans and Other Studies of Birds and Beasts, Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a collection of digitized books and periodicals from twelve major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions. Until now, much of the world’s published knowledge on biological diversity was available only to those with direct access to the collections of these partner institutions. Currently, 73,093 volumes (of the two million collected over 200 years by the partners) have been digitized and are available for free on BHL. And the BHL collection is growing weekly.

BHL is the digitization component of the larger Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) project which strives to create a Web resource page for every known species.

Making biodiversity literature freely available around the world is critical as many species have gone extinct and as the extinction rate increases with climate change. In some cases, this literature may be the only record that will ever be available for a particular species. Providing it online for free will mean that scientists, citizen scientists, and students around the world will have access for their research. More online open access additions to the world’s biodiversity literature are underway as the European Commission is funding the BHL-Europe project with 22 institutions prepared to digitize and make available European language biodiversity literature.

BHL is predominantly in English—the interface, metadata, and majority of texts are in English. However, the library contains books and periodicals in numerous languages. Luckily, science provides a universal language which BHL puts to good use: you can easily search by scientific name across all the literature in the library (or view this video tutorial to learn how to search across BHL for any specific species).

In addition to scientific name, browsing options include by titles, authors, subjects, map, and year. The BHL Book of the Week Blog also provides a helpful path into the collection for non-scientists and scientists alike.

Because open access is a goal of BHL, all the texts may be downloaded and the illustrations found within the pages of the books are available for non-commercial use (commercial uses may be licensed). The easiest way to locate books which contain illustrations is to click Pictorial Works from the subjects cloud.

The About documentation for BHL is written in wiki form by BHL partners. This may account for certain lapses in information. For example, I could not locate funding information for the project. And while I’m fairly certain that the scanning for the project is done by the Internet Archive, I failed to find this mentioned in the documentation.

All of the texts available in BHL are also available in the Internet Archive’s collection–and because the Archive often provides multiple readers and options for viewing each book, you may want to check there once you find a BHL a book you are interested in exploring.

Biodiversity Heritage Library Wrap-up: ♦ ♦ ♦

Subject	Open Access Biodiversity Literature
Scope	1484 – Present (but majority between 1850-1950); Language is English but includes texts in many languages
Media Type	Books, periodicals, other texts
Asset Quantity	♦ ♦             37,891 titles / 73,093 volumes & growing
Asset Quality	♦ ♦ ♦        Complete texts from select institutions
Asset Presentation Tools	♦ ♦            Book reader is adequate but lacks search inside a book & simple navigation back to item page and search results
Asset Reusability	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦    All asssets may be downloaded and re-used for non-commerical purposes. Usage must comply with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Generic license
Metadata Quality	♦ ♦ ♦      Contains 5 basic elements plus links for detailed info including MARC records. Great for librarians!
Browsing Options	♦ ♦ ♦ ♦  Browse by subject, title, author, scientific name, map, or year
Search functionality	♦ ♦           Search is of titles, authors, scientic names, and subjects only: No text search inside of books is provided
Overall Design	♦ ♦ ♦      The design is simple, functional, and text-oriented–well suited to the content of the library
iPhone Navigation	♦               Not able to click or scroll easily through result pages or pages of books