HathiTrust Digital Library at Auburn

Collections are a useful way of pulling together material. Anyone can search collections users have created and made public. With our institutional membership, you can log in and can also create your own collections and choose to keep them private or publish them for public use.

Collections can serve a variety of uses. For instance, you can gather together all the works of your chosen author for easy access as you do your research or analyze word usage within a body of literature by searching just the works in a collections.

Clicking on the Collections link at the top of the homepage brings up a list of all the collections created and made public by HathiTrust users. There are a variety of ways to sort these public collections, including by number of items, title, and owner.  You may also search public collections by keyword. Collections created by HathiTrust do have an advanced search option to allow you to search within the collection.

Creating a new collection is simple:

1. Log in to HathiTrust.
2. From the Collections page, click on 'Create New Collection' in the right-hand corner under the Collections list. 
3. Name your collection and provide a short description.
4. Choose whether to make it a private collection (only you can see it) or a public collection (all HathiTrust users can see it).
5. Click 'Add.'  

Note: a private collection can be made public at a later date.

Once you've created a collection, you can add items from the HathiTrust Digital Library.

To add items to a collection when using the Full Text Search option:

1. On the search results page check the box next to any item you want to add to a collection.
2. Select the appropriate collection from the drop-down menu at the top of the search results.
3. Click 'Add Selected.' 
4. A message will appear stating the items have been added to your collection.

To add items to a collection when using the Catalog Search option:

1. On the search results page click on the catalog record you want.
2. In the catalog record click on the link(s) under Viewability.  You may add items available to your collection in full view or limited view.
3. On the document page select your collection from the drop-down menu on the left.
4. Click 'Add.'
5. Repeat for each item you want to add to your collection.