On December 18, 2012, Mr. John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust, Associate University Librarian at the University of Michigan, gave a lecture "HathiTrust: Strategies and challenges in consolidating the digitized published record" in the Tokyo Main Library of the National Diet Library (NDL). The event was relayed to the Kansai-kan of the NDL and about 188 people, quite a few of them university librarians themselves, were in attendance.

HathiTrust is a well known digital repository project launched in 2008 in the United States. It is involved in wide range of activities such as long-term preservation of digitized cultural records, collaboration with other systems, support of management of paper materials, copyright handling, etc.

<<logo of HathiTrust>>

<<a top page of HathiTrutst>>

In the first part, Mr. Wilkin gave an outline of the HathiTrust project, its status and future strategy in consolidating the digitized published record. In his presentation, he introduced the following three specific goals and objectives of the HathiTrust and emphasized that the partners of HathiTrust are working together closely to achieve them.

The first point is building a reliable archive that is co-owned by a number of academic institutions, mechanisms for direct ingest of non-Google-digitized materials, support for materials beyond books and journals, and compliance with the Trustworthy Repository Audit and Certification criteria.

The second point is　preservation, the coordination of strategies for print storage, and sustaining the public good of the repository in a way that ensures value for members and mitigates the problem of free riders. The primary challenges in these areas have to do with adequate infrastructure and scalability, developing a feasible and appropriate pricing model for partners, and offering sufficient benefits and services for members.

The third point is improving access. Since its launch in 2004, HathiTrust has developed a next-generation bibliographic catalog with faceted browse, full-text search of the entire repository also with faceted browse, and a pageturner that offers multiple views of content: standard single-page, scrolling, flipping, and thumbnail. In addition, HathiTrust offers APIs and datafeeds such as “hathifiles” to support the development of access and discovery tools.

<<Mr. Wilkin giving a lecture in the first part>>

Mr. Wilkin closed his lecture with expectation of further growth of HathiTrust, saying that the full potential of HathiTrust lies still years ahead and its true value will manifest itself in a fundamental transformation in the way they operate as libraries and deliver services to users in the 21st century.

After the lecture, in the second part of the meeting, there was a discussion by Mr. Wilkin, Dr. Ikki Ohmukai (Associate Professor, National Institute of Informatics: NII), Prof. Hiroya Takeuchi (Faculty of Letters, Chiba University / Librarian of Chiba University Library) and Mr. Toshiyasu Oba (Director of the Digital Information Distribution Division, Digital Information Department, National Diet Library).

At the beginning of the discussion part, each Japanese panelist gave a brief presentation for about 10 minutes; example of the NII, of universities in Japan and of the NDL. After these presentations, Mr. Wilkin asked about the present situation of collaboration for digitization in Japan and its challenges to other panelists. They answered that collaboration for digitization in Japan still remains on a small scale and that a framework to share the results of copyright clearance investigation is required, because there is only so much each institutions can do to deal independently with copyright or other issues.

Next, Mr. Wilkin and the panelists engaged in a frank and lively exchange of views about the significance of the HathiTrust and advantages of participation in the project, the difference between HathiTrust and Google books, creation and identification of metadata for materials stored in the repository, issues of the copyright clearance of digitized materials, etc.

<<Mr. Wilkin and three Japanese panelists in the second part>>

At the end of the discussion, a member of the audience asked Mr. Wilkin a question about what kind of influence to so-called digital humanities can be observed by pioneering digitization of humanity materials in Michigan University. Mr. Wilkin said that it is too early in the day to evaluate the influence on digitized material releasing to the research in a quantitative way, and study on the subject will be carried on in the HathiTrust research center established in 2011.

In the HathiTrust, the framework for sharing the results of copyright clearance, digitization, and cost burden works very well. The lecture meeting was highly suggestive as to how we should think about the future of consolidating digitized published records in Japan.

For the content of his lecture, please refer to the slides below:

• Slides

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