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HathiTrust Digital Library at Auburn

This guide explains HathiTrust and its benefits to the Auburn Community

Engineering & Physics Librarian

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Andrew Wohrley
Subjects: Engineering, Physics

Searching HathiTrust

HathiTrust offers two ways of searching their content. A Catalog Search searches a catalog record that lists basic bibliographic information, like title and publisher, as well as information about a book, such as subject terms. A Full-text Search searches the full content of a book, including title, table of contents, the text itself, and any other sections.

Each type of search offers a basic, Google-like keyword search option as well as an advanced search option.

Some general search tips are:

  • Use quotation marks to look for an exact phrase: e.g., "Alabama Polytechnic"
  • Use boolean operators (and, or, not) to make your search more specific. "AND" combines search terms ("Alabama Polytechnic" AND agriculture), "OR" looks for either search term (agriculture OR farming), while "NOT" excludes a search term ("Auburn University" NOT Montgomery)

Limiting Search Results

The results page for a Full-text Search and a Catalog Search will look the same.  On the left-hand side of the page is a section entitled 'Refine results' with several options for narrowing down the search results.  Options for limiting your results include subject, author, language, place of publication, date of publication, original format and original location.

Advanced Searches

Besides the basic searches, you can also use two Advanced Searches: Advanced Catalog Search and Advanced Full-Text Search. 

Advanced search allows you to search multiple fields at once. You can also limit your results by full-text availability, publication year, language and original format.

Why Can't I View An Item?

Many items in HathiTrust are marked Limited (Search Only). This means that these items are in copyright (or presumed to be by HathiTrust). You can sometimes see snippets of these items where your search terms appear. For more information about HathiTrust's copyright policy, see their Copyright FAQ. To obtain material you're unable to access in HathiTrust, please check Discovery or the library catalog before trying Interlibrary Loan.