Building your own collection allows you to save HathiTrust books to a list that you control. You can add or remove books from your collection, make it public or private, share it with others, and search within the books that are in your collection. You can make as many collections as you wish, and there is no size limit to collections.
The primary purposes of building your own collection include:
being able to search within it;
saving works for future reference;
sharing a collection of works with other users by making your collection public;
downloading basic information about your collection in order to build a workset in the HathiTrust Research Center or to analyze the books in your collection.
There are several important things to keep in mind related to building your own collections:
Collections are temporary if you aren’t logged in. To save them, make sure you are logged in with your university account or a guest account.
You can save your collection even if you are not affiliated with a HathiTrust member library by logging in as a guest.
Materials that are not included in the HathiTrust Digital Library cannot be included in your collections.
Your collections cannot have shared ownership. To collaborate on building and managing a collection, we recommend logging into HathiTrust with a guest account and sharing the login credentials with your collaborators.
\uD83D\uDCD8 Instructions
You can add books to your collection in a number of ways: from a Full Text & All Fields Search on the main page, from a search on the Advanced Search page, or while viewing a book.
Add a book to your collection from a Full Text & All Fields Search on the main page
Go to our main page. Enter your search criteria in the search bar. Check to make sure “Full Text & All Fields” is selected in the search options, then click on the Search button.
Note: If you select any search option other than “Full Text & All Fields,” the checkboxes described below will not be available, and you will not be able to add search results to your collections.
When the search results load, use the checkboxes next to each title to select books to include in your collection. You can also use the “Select all items” checkbox to select all search results on the page.
Select one of your existing collections from the drop-down menu, or select the New Collection option. Select the Add button to confirm.
A message will appear once the books are successfully added to your collection. If you are creating a new collection, you will be prompted to type a name for your collection, and the items you had selected will be automatically added to it.
Add a book to your collection while performing a search from the Advanced Search page
Go to the Advanced Search page. Enter your search criteria in the “Search by field” section. Under “Additional Search Options,” check the box entitled “Always use the Full Text Index,” located under “Index Options.” Then enter any additional search criteria in the “Additional Search Options” section, and click on the “Advanced Search” button to complete your search.
Note: If you do not check the box entitled “Always use the Full Text Index,” the checkboxes described below will not be available, and you will not be able to add search results to your collections.
When the search results load, use the checkboxes next to each title to select books to include in your collection. You can also use the “Select all items” checkbox to select all search results on the page.
Select one of your existing collections from the drop-down menu, or select the New Collection option. Select the Add button to confirm.
A message will appear once the books are successfully added to your collection. If you are creating a new collection, you will be prompted to type a name for your collection, and the items you had selected will be automatically added to it.
Add a book to your collection while viewing it in the Book Viewer
Open a book in HathiTrust, such as this collection of “Fairy tales from the far North, by P. C. Asbjörnsen.”
In the left sidebar, scroll down to Collections. Select the heading to expand the section.
Select one of your existing collections or select the New Collection option. Then click on the Add button to confirm.
A message will appear letting you know that the books were successfully added to your collection. If you are creating a new collection, you will be prompted to type a name for the collection, and the books you had selected will be automatically added to your new collection.
Remove a book from your collection
Go to the list of your collections and select the collection you would like to edit.
Use the checkboxes next to each title to select books to remove from your collection. You can also use the “Select all items” checkbox to select all search results on the page.
Instead of clicking on the “Add” button at the top, click on the arrow just to the right of it to expand a drop-down menu. Then select “Remove” from the menu.
There will be no pop-up window asking you to confirm. However, you will see a message at the top of your collection confirming that the book(s) were removed.
Download the metadata from your collection
You can download the metadata from any collection that you can view. Once you open the collection, look in the left sidebar for the “Download metadata” section. Expanding it will show you these options:
You can select one of two modes for download:
a tab-separated values (TSV) file, and
a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file (which can be used to create a workset in the HathiTrust Research Center portal).
Each type of file contains all of the data elements provided in the hathifiles, as well as catalog record and item URL fields. The JSON file also includes metadata about the collection itself, such as when it was created. It can be used to create a workset in the HathiTrust Research Center portal.
You can find out more information in our help article on downloading information about your collection.