Database Tutorials

HathiTrust provides access to 17+ million digitized items, including full digitized books (the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries), archival documents and videos.  This database is a  collaborative of academic and research libraries. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law. 

Navigate to HathiTrust

Library Home Page ► A to Z Database List ► HathiTrust

Widener is not a partner institution, but this only prevents you from downloading some full books.  Yet, this database provides tremendous access for non-member  institutions, allowing users to:

• Search across the entire collection.
• Read and view works that are “full-view”.
• Search within works that are “limited search-only”.
• Download a single page at a time from works that have download restrictions (e.g., works that are in the public domain but were digitized by Google or other vendors with contractual limitations).
• Download an entire work that doesn’t have download restrictions (e.g., works digitized by Internet Archive and other organizations, works that have been opened with a Creative Commons license).

You can also log in using an existing account (Facebook, Google, Twitter)  and create a Guest Account:

• Logged in guests can create, save and share public or private collections.

• To create a guest account select  LOG IN and the click on See options to log in a a guest and then the links to (Google, Facebook or Twitter).

 

Use the main search screen (with full text and Full view only selected) to search for titles, authors, keywords and quotations.

Searching by Title

• If you know the specific title of a book you need, enter the title in the search box.

          Ex: In this example, search for the title: Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engles.

Results - Limited Record

• Click on Catalog Record to obtain additional information about the book as well as links to similar items in HathiTrust.
• Click on Full View to access the full text of the book.

Results - Full View

Features of the Full View:

Page Viewing Options:

• HathiTrust offers many page viewing options that enable you to comfortably read the entire text on the screen, regardless of access levels:

  
  View Plain Text

  Scroll Page Scans

  Flip Page Scans

  View Thumbnails

  View Page by Page

Get this Book

• Find in Library - Click here to see what libraries hold this print book, it searches Widener University Library holdings as well.
• Download this page (PDF) - Download the current page.
• Download Pages (PDF) - Download the pages that you select. (this option is not always available.)
• Download whole book (PDF) - Download the entire text (this option is not always available.)

Search in this text: Use the search box to find keywords in the text and you will obtain a hyperlinked list of pages on which the keywords appear.

Sharing content

• Scroll the left hand navigation all the way down to find the Share options.

•   Click on any social media icon to share the item on that platform.
  
   

• Copy the permanent link provided and paste it into an email or on Canvas.

 

Searching by Keywords

• Searching using keywords allows you to obtain books, serial publications, conference materials, government reports, archival documents and much more!

EX: Search for racism and "higher education" (use quotation marks for phrases) in the main search box. Make sure the Full-text and Full view only are selected.

Results - Limited Record

• The authors listed for the first and third entry (The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the United States National Advisory Committee on Black Higher Education and Black Colleges and Universities) suggest that these are full text reports.
• While the second entry does not have an author listed, the title One America in the 21st century : forging a new future : the President's Initiative on Race : the Advisory Board's report to the President of the source, clearly indicates that this is a report.
• Click on Catalog Record to obtain additional information about these reports as well as links to similar items in HathiTrust.
• Click on Full View to access the full text of the report.
• If you want to see what other formats are available for this search, you can click on the subject or author filters that appear to the left of the Limited Results screen:
  • Relevant Subjects                                                                                                                  Number of Results for this Search
    • Government Publications                                                                                              1,114
    • United States. Congress Periodicals                                                                              784
  • Relevant Authors
    • United States. National Archives and Records Administration                                  746
    • United States Commission on Civil Rights                                                                  495

 

Searching by Quotations

You can search HaithiTrust for a quote from within a source to find the text it is quoted from:

EX: In the main search box, enter the quote "Off with her head" (in quotation marks), make sure that Full-text and Full view only are selected.

Results - Limited Record

• This quote comes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. While this search returned many results, as it is ordered by relevance, the top results offer different versions of this book:

 

• Click on the Full View for this entry to access the text. From here, use the search box at the top of the page to search within the text to find the location of the quote.

• Click on Find.
• The search returns a list with the page numbers where the quote appears and links to those pages in the text:

 

• Click on any hyperlinked page number and it will take you to the exact page on which the quote appears. EX: Click on Page 115 and you will see the following:

If you created a Guest Account and logged in to HathiTrust using that account, you can create a collection of items that you found.  This makes it easy to locate documents that you could not or chose not to download and they will be available any time you log into the Guest Account (using Goolgle, Twitter or Facebook) in an easy to find place.

• In the full view, in the left hand navigation, scroll down to the bottom where Add to Collection appears.
• The example below shows the Adding and sharing features available in this database, here you can:
  • Add the item to an existing collection.
  • Create a new collection and add the item to that collection.
  • Share a Permanent link to an item, though various social media accounts (or copy and paste the Permanent link and share that via email or Canvas).

 

 

• Click on  the drop down menu for New Collection. Choose an existing collection, (in the example "Jill's Favorite Books) or New Collection (and name the collection).
   
• Click on Add and the item will be added.
• Once you add the item, the collection name will appear as a hyperlink.

 

• When you click on the hyperlink for the selected collection's name (in this example "Jill's Favorite Books) you will be able to access all the items added to the collection anytime you want.