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HathiTrust Digital Library

Searching Hathitrust

There are two primary ways of searching content in the HathiTrust Digital Library content. A Catalog Search searches a catalog record that lists basic information such as title and publisher, and 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.

Catalog Search

Searching the HathiTrust catalog is similar to searching the WSU Online Library Catalog.  The default search option on the HathiTrust homepage is a keyword search.  You can choose to search all fields or search certain fields, such as title or author.  You can click on 'Full view only' to search just those items available in full-text.  

To access the advanced search option, click on "Advanced Catalog Search". This 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.

Full-Text Search

On the HathiTrust homepage, the default search option is a keyword search.  You can limit your search results to those items for which the full-text is available by clicking on 'Full view only'.

To access the advanced search option click on "Advanced Full-Text Search".  Advanced search allows you to search for keywords in the full text and in specific parts of a book such as the title, author or series.  You can also limit your results by full-text availability, publication year, language and original format.

Refining Search Results in Either Type of Search

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.
 

Learn more about searching

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