Library doubles digital resource collection

By Lianelle Barraza, January 19 2016 —

The University of Calgary library has added three million new library resources, doubling the size of its collection. 

The library accomplished this feat by working with HathiTrust, an international partner of several major academic institutions and libraries. HathiTrust offers U of C students, faculty and staff access to digitized resources from Google and Microsoft that can be downloaded and viewed on computers and mobile devices.

Vice-provost libraries and cultural resources Tom Hickerson said the addition of nearly three million volumes makes the 50-year old library collection comparable to other major academic institutions and research facilities.

“International partnerships are developing ways of making more material available essentially free of charge,” Hickerson said. “The collection is an idea that we want to make more material available to every research library and their research communities.”

Digitized volumes were available prior to the partnership, but students and researchers could not download or analyze data. Users can now create personal
collections of resources.

“We’re always going to be pushing the technologies of tomorrow forward,” Hickerson said.

He also highlighted the modest price tag associated with the new materials.

“There are few bodies of material internationally, publicly available such as HathiTrust, and for around $15,000, which is considerably less than the $10 million we usually spend adding to our collection,” Hickerson said.

Students and professors can access HathiTrust materials by using the search box on library.ucalgary.ca, or through HathiTrust directly.