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HathiTrust: How can I use HathiTrust for my research and with coursework?

The University of San Diego is a member of HathiTrust, a not-for-profit collaborative of over 200 academic and research libraries, preserving 17.4+ million digitized items.

Help Using the HathiTrust Digital Library

For help with using HathiTrust in research and course assignments, contact your library subject specialist.  

HathiTrust also offers a Help page with FAQs on logging in, searching and viewing books, building collections with HathiTrust, and downloading works.

HathiTrust Catalog Search

HathiTrust Searching Tips

Full View Only: Checking the Full View Only box in HathiTrust searching will return results to books that are available for full view and will exclude in-copyright material, which is not available for viewing by members or visitors.

Phrase Searching: Use quotations to specify a phrase in your search.  For example, "occult fiction" will search specifically for that phrase.

Wildcards: Use an asterisk symbol * or a question mark symbol ? to search for alternate forms of a word.

  • Use * to stand for several characters:  e.g., optim* will find optimal, optimize or optimum.
  • Use ? to stand for a single character: e.g., wom?n will find woman and women.
  • If you would simply like to browse without entering a search term you can enter * by itself.

Boolean Searching: Use AND and OR (capitalized) between words to combine them with Boolean logic.

  • Using AND: (heart AND cardiac) AND surgery requires results to include heart surgery and cardiac surgery and to exclude a work that doesn't have both terms.
  • Using OR: (heart OR cardiac) AND surgery will find works about heart surgery or cardiac surgery

NEED HELP WITH SEARCHING?  REACH OUT TO US THROUGH ASK-A-LIBRARIAN or COPLEY@SANDIEGO.EDU.

How can I use HathiTrust for my research and with coursework?

  • Discover items digitized from libraries around the world. It’s like going to dozens of different college and university libraries to do research — without leaving your home desk.
  • Looking for primary sources? Find texts you need for research papers or projects in HathiTrust’s digital library of 17+ million books, journals, and publications.
    • 51% of the collection is in English, and hundreds of languages are represented, including large amounts of material in German, French, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.
    • Texts include items in Language and Literature; Social Sciences; Sciences; the Arts and more.
    • Uncover facts from the past in 1.3 million U.S. Federal Documents, including the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Bureau of Indian Affairs publications, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publications, and U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and many other federal divisions.
  • ​​​​​​​Search every word in every book and item in the whole collection using keywords or phrases. Use these searches to discover items on desired topics or themes, identify items for interlibrary loan requests, or to add to your research bibliography.
  • Create a bibliography with a few clicks:  View or download citations for any item in the collection in MLA or APA format.
  • Use faceted searching, metadata tools, or HathiTrust Research Center services to perform complex analyses, data mining research, and other digital humanities activities.