N.B. Text below being revised, new charts added, etc.

Since writing this originally, the analysis has evolved somewhat, and this needs to be revised before being shared broadly.

HathiTrust Usage Analysis

As part of some work to expand the SimplyE project to include more materials useful to the research community, I’ve done some basic analysis of HathiTrust usage.

HathiTrust describes itself as:

a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The mission of HathiTrust is to contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge. There are more than 120 partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide.

It contains more than 15 million volumes, including 5.8 million open volumes in the public domain. NYPL, through its Google Library Project partnership, has contributed more than 300,000 volumes to HathiTrust. For more info see the HathiTrust about page.

The data below covers the period May 8, 2014 - May 7, 2017.

Usage

All Items

This graph displays all volumes, open volumes accessed, and closed volumes with attempted access by year. (See full graph for larger view.)

Open items

This graph displays all open volumes and all open volumes accessed by year (toggle “Total volumes” in the legend to see all HathiTrust volumes for a given year as well). (See full graph for larger view.)

Headline numbers

15,095,384 retrievable records from the Hathifiles (Pandas choked on a small subset of records which are not included here, and are almost certainly not among the most-viewed items)

3,247,601 distinct HathiTrust volume IDs (that I was able to scrape out of three years of analytics data)

Most viewed titles

See top_open_items.txt for the full list

Title Uses Publication Date
Quicksand, 823739 views 1928
The surnames of Scotland, their origin meaning and history / 619250 views 1962
Solid mensuration, 452809 views 1934
The human figure / 348795 views 1907
America is in the heart, a personal history, 326990 views 1946
Godey’s magazine. 311573 views 1850
Roster of the Confederate soldiers of Georgia, 1861-1865 / 285162 views 9999

Most viewed NYPL titles

See NYPL_top_open_items.txt for the full list

Title Uses Publication Date
Miranda / 48465 views 1915
Wife no. 19, or the story of a life in bondage : being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy / 36158 views 1875
Men of West Virginia … 30308 views 1903
Illustrated trade catalogue and price list : manufacturers, importers and jobbers of watchmakers’, jewelers’ and engravers’ supplies of every description : optical goods, chains, charms, etc. : originators of the box matetial [sic] and makers of Swartchild’s celebrated watchmakers’ benches : 1897-1898 / 28594 views 1897
A standard history of Stark County, Ohio : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, civic and social development : a chronicle of the people, with family lineage and memoirs / 26722 views 1916

Closed (“Limited View”) titles with most attempted views

See top_closed_items.txt for the full list

Title Attempted Uses Publication Date
The competent manager : a model for effective performance / 12226 views 1982
Objects of daily use, with over 1800 figures from University college, London, 12150 views 1927
My experiences in the world war, 10976 views 1931
Catalogue of Alexandrian coins, 9132 views 1933
The regimental history of the 3rd Queen Alexandra’s own Gurkha rifles from April 1815 to December 1927, 9088 views 1929

Publication Date analysis

See full chart for better view

This chart describes the frequency of publication year for the top 500,000 requested items in HathiTrust from May 2014 - May 2017.

Note: the embedded histogram on this page only includes the top 40,000 data points because the free version of plotly has a 40K data point limit; for a full-screen interactive version of this chart with 500,000 data points, see the full Histogram.

Meanwhile, you can toggle the data series on this chart, for example if you want to view just the items among the top 500K that were requested but could not be viewed because they are “limited view” items (i.e. closed for copyright reasons).

Notes:

Usage analysis

See full chart for better view

This chart describes the usage curve for the top 10,000 items in HathiTrust from May 2014 - May 2017.

(For full-screen interactive version of this chart, see Line Chart (or the linear scale version as well).

Tools and method

My steps and the tools I used were very roughly as follows: