TRAIL Content

How does TRAIL Backup/Preserve Content?

HathiTrust storage architecture has two synchronized instances of storage with wide geographic separation and an encrypted tape backup with 6 months of previous-version retention.  For more information, see https://www.hathitrust.org/technology.
The University of North Texas maintains redundancy for all the content in the UNT Digital Library system.  For every file there are at least two copies (both preservation files as well as all of the access files that are getting viewed online).

Why would TRAIL need reports that are digitally available in HathiTrust?

There are several reasons. First, if our series processing inventories indicate that we still need the report, we actively seek the report.  We do not have the staff to check our needed items against what was digitized and made available in HathiTrust by another content provider.  Second, ONLY reports digitized by TRAIL are indexed and searchable by our search interface.  Finally, technical reports that have maps, foldouts, etc. are rarely included in the reports available at HathiTrust.  TRAIL sends these reports to the University of North Texas (UNT), our other TRAIL repository, where the maps, foldouts, etc., are digitized along with the reports.

If I have reports to potentially donate, but these reports have been digitized and available elsewhere, does TRAIL want them?

It’s quite likely that we do.  You may have reports that will fill in the gaps for series we’re working on.  Please compare what you have against the TRAIL Series Inventories.
 
If you cannot find the series that pertain to your reports, please contact the TRAIL Collections Working Group Coordinator (the Coordinator’s name and email can be found here).   This person leads the group that determines which series TRAIL will consider for digitization.

In addition to searching, can I browse TRAIL content by agency or series?

No, not at present.  The TRAIL Search Interface does not have a "browse" function because a large share of TRAIL content consists of documents for which agency names and series titles have changed frequently over the years.  Creating and maintaining an authority record structure, which would pull together all the variant combinations for each agency/series pairing, would require a significant investment of our resources at this time.

Do the TRAIL documents in HathiTrust have download restrictions?

Anyone can download TRAIL documents, page by page. HathiTrust partner institutions can download documents page by page or can download a PDF of the complete document.  The complete document is available for viewing online. For more information see the Access Chart on the HathiTrust Help page.