Formalizing Accessions from Patrons for HathiTrust: “Hey, would you like this book I've got?” | U-M Library

"First and foremost, what we mean by 'accessioning' is the process of adding new materials to the library collection. That usually means adding materials to a library’s physical collection, but can also mean adding materials to digital collections.

Over the past several months, we’ve worked on new procedures for handling what we do next. What happens if no HathiTrust contributing institution has the volume on their shelves, and the volume is a good addition to the HathiTrust corpus? In these cases, U-M Library steps into the breach.

Since our department has the capacity to digitize volumes from our shelves that Google cannot scan - our Digital Conversion Unit can handle an average of 4500 volumes a year (vended and in-house digitization) - we can easily handle a small throughput of these volumes from HathiTrust. Since the patron’s volume has already been vetted by Angelina as to its merit for the HathiTrust corpus, we simply need approval from our U-M Library subject specialists to accession the volume for digitization, and we need to catalog and digitize the volume."