When it comes to hidden gems for genealogy research, the HathiTrust is a potential treasure trove for genealogists. HathiTrust is an online collection of books primarily published before 1923. Many of these can be viewed online in their entirety, and others can be searched for keywords. This digital repository, underutilized by many genealogists, contains many digitized publications from academic and research institutions and federal documents that are often relevant to your family history from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house member institution holdings. Items in the public domain are in full-view for everyone and items held in copyright are searchable. Over 40% of the holdings are in the public domain.
From a genealogy research perspective, the subject content is primarily items that have been digitized by U.S. libraries, so that will be the bulk of the collection. Some examples of the major genealogy oriented collections include: 1. Bureau of Indian Affairs 2. Genealogy Research 3. Society of American Archivists 4. Ancestry and Genealogy 5. Records of American Colonies
While these collections seem to be primarily limited to American research, do not make the assumption that foreign research is impossible. Researchers seeking ancestors from Canada, the British Isles, and Western Europe will find holdings of relevance. The HathiTrust collection includes digital books, magazines and other scanned items, sound recordings, maps and other ephemera. With multiple methods of search, PDF, image and plain text downloads, there are multiple research options available.
While the collection is managed by academic and research libraries, access is not limited solely to students attending member institutions or members of special repositories. Researchers that do not belong to partner institutions can create a guest account, login with an existing account via Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc., or create a “friend” account with a member university or related academic institution. Logged-in guests can create, save and share public or private collections.
Researchers who choose not to establish an account still have multiple options to locate and use materials. All users can perform the following activities: 1. Search across the entire collection of materials. 2. Read and view works that are classified as “full view” 3. Search within works that are “limited” (search only) 4. Download a single page at a time from works that have download restrictions. This would include works that are in the public domain but were digitized by Google or other vendors with contractual limitations. 5. Download an entire work that does not have any download restrictions. This would include any works digitized by Internet Archive and other organizations or works that were created with a Creative Commons license.
Search options on the HathiTrust database include the following: 1. Author 2. Full-text 3. Index (name, place, etc.) 4. Time period 5. Type of material
Given the size and scope of the materials available, full-text searching can return thousands of results, even more if you’re searching for surnames or common historical themes or locations. Index searches are the best way to search for broad themes or specific time periods of history. If you retrieve too many results, then use the material type, time period, or author to narrow your search results. For more information and guidelines on this topic, I recommend the following articles listed below.