The following information was contributed by CDL's Shared Print Program Staff.
Frequently Asked Questions - UC Participation in the HathiTrust Shared Print Program
The Basics
What is the HathiTrust Shared Print Program?
The HathiTrust Shared Print Program (HTSPP) was established in 2016 as a new collaborative service to complement the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL). 79 HathiTrust members serve as retention libraries for approximately 18.4 million print monographs that mirror digitized titles in the HTDL. To learn more, please see the program’s landing page.
How are the University of California Libraries involved?
Several UC campus libraries and both the Regional Library Facilities (RLFs) serve as retention partners in the HTSPP. Participating campuses include UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, and UC Merced. UC Libraries is also currently represented on the HT Shared Print Advisory Committee by Jesse Silva (UC Berkeley Libraries).
How can I contribute to the HathiTrust Shared Print Program?
Please contact Heather Weltin if you are interested in making commitments or contributing to the leadership of the program.
For Retention Libraries
What happens if something was mistakenly committed to HathiTrust (i.e. we don’t actually own it, metadata errors, etc.)?
HTSPP does not require its retention libraries to physically validate the monographs committed for retention. Therefore, it is understood that retention libraries may surface titles committed in error or requiring updates to key metadata (such as identifiers). If you find that something has been mistakenly committed, please follow the Directions for Updating Data in the HathiTrust Shared Print Registry.
Commitments at the RLFs
How were the commitments scoped for the RLFs?
In Phase 1 of the program, the RLF Directors and CDL Shared Print Program Manager worked with the Shared Library Facility Board and the Council of University Librarians to identify RLF monographs appropriate for commitment in the HTSPP. Commitments were scoped to circulating, single-part monographs, for which there were no discernible condition issues. Ultimately, UC committed to retain approximately 1.4 million monographs in the RLFs as part of the HTSPP.
How are the RLFs recording their commitments?
RLF commitments were made on the understanding that a forthcoming OCLC registration service would facilitate recording commitments since the volume of RLF commitments precluded recording necessary metadata record by record. OCLC has released its new registration service and HathiTrust has defined a workflow that draws upon its own shared print registry, rather than calling upon the individual retention libraries to extract and submit their commitments to OCLC. The RLFs are recording their commitments in OCLC WorldCat via this workflow.
What about the local RLF records? Are the commitments recorded there as well?
As of January 2024, the RLFs are working on a project to update their records to reflect their HathiTrust commitments. Retention commitments will be flagged in SILS and will be updated with HathiTrust and in OCLC when the projects are complete.
Why is it necessary to register RLF commitments in OCLC WorldCat? Aren’t RLF collections persistent?
It is true that all of the RLF commitments were drawn from collections already defined within the UC system as persistent. However, registering the commitments in OCLC Worldcat ensures that those commitments are discoverable beyond UC and actionable for our partners in HathiTrust in terms of access and comparison.