Sign Up

• Go to HTRC Analytics  (https://analytics.hathitrust.org/)
• On the top right of the webpage, click on the "Sign Up" button. 

• • Password must be more than 15 characters long.
  • Password must contain characters from three of the following five categories:
    • Uppercase characters of European languages (A through Z, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
    • Lowercase characters of European languages (a through z, sharp-s, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
    • Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
    • Nonalphanumeric characters
    • Any Unicode character that is categorized as an alphabetic character but is not uppercase or lowercase. This includes Unicode characters from Asian languages.
  • Password must not contain any white spaces.
  • Password must not contain your user ID.

Trouble shooting: if you can't successfully sign up

You need to have an academic email to sign up. We maintain a growing list of allowed email domains, e.g. emails ending with .edu or edu.ac or edu.tw. I you find you can't successfully sign up with your academic email then it's probably your email domain is not on the list. In this situation, please submit an account request by clicking on the request an account button within the error message on the page.

Sign In

• You will receive an email in the email that you registered. Go to your email box, and follow the activation link in the email to activate your account.
• Now you have created an HTRC Analytics account, you can sign in. On the top right of the page, sign in with your username and password.
  
  

Navigate to the Capsule Creation Page

Navigate to "Data Capsules" on the top menu of HTRC Analytics.

Create a Capsule

Click Create A Capsule toward the top right.

You will be prompted to choose to create either a Demo Capsule or a Research Capsule

Create Demo Capsule

Note:

• Demo Capsules are not configureable and can access public domain content only.
• You cannot request to export derived data from a Demo Capsule.

Hit the Create Capsule button. The capsule creation procedure usually takes about 1 minute to complete. Refresh your screen to see if it has finished.

You will be prompted to agree to the HTRC Data Capsules Terms of Use. Please review this document as it outlines policy for acceptable in-Capsule behavior. 

Create Research Capsule

Note:

• Demo Capsules are configureable and by default can access public domain content only.
• You request to export derived data from a Research Capsule.
• Additional information is required to create your Capsule. 
• During creation or after it's created, researchers from HathiTrust member institutions can request for their Research Capsule to be converted to one with computational access to the full HathiTrust corpus, including in-copyright content. 

Fill out the form with the title of your research project, and choose the specs for your Capsule. 

There are 2 images you can choose from, one that includes sample public domain volumes from HathiTrust for you to test with, and one that does not. 

Capsule size can range from 2-4 VCPUs and from 4-16 GB of memory. The VCPUs and memory allocation you choose will affect the processing speed of your Capsule. 

Add the description for your research project. These answers will be used to aid in reviewing requests to export results from your Capsule. The more information you can provide, the more easily we can assess your results for adherence to the HTRC's Non-consumptive Use Research Policy. 

Affiliates of HathiTrust member institutions can check the box to request a Capsule with access to the full HathiTrust corpus. 

Checking that box will prompt you to fill out additional information about your project. Note: Creation requests from users who check this box will be routed for human review. Your request will be reviewed to verify that you are affiliated with a HathiTrust member institutions and that your request demonstrates serious research intentions in compliance with the HTRC's Non-consumptive Use Research Policy and  HTRC Data Capsules Terms of Use. 

Include more information about your anticipated results to further assist in the human review of your data export requests.

If you like, you can choose to allow HTRC to communicate anonymized information about your research project. You must also agree that you will not share your log-in information for HTRC Analytics with anyone. 

You will be prompted to agree to the HTRC Data Capsules Terms of Use. Please review this document as it outlines policy for acceptable in-Capsule behavior. You will be reminded of these terms regularly while using your Capsule. 

Check Capsule Status 

After creating a capsule, you will be taken back to the Capsules page. By default the capsule you just created is not running. 

Convert a Research Capsule

HathiTrust member-affiliated individuals can request to convert existing Research Capsules into one with access to the full HathiTrust corpus. 

From your Capsules page, click on the ID of the Capsule you would like to convert. Then, click the button to Request access to Full HathiTrust Corpus.

You will be taken to the Capsule creation form. If you submit answers when creating your Capsule, they will appear for you to review and, if desired, edit. You will also be asked to fill in additional information about your research use case. Your request will be reviewed to verify that you are affiliated with a HathiTrust member institutions and that your request demonstrates serious research intentions in compliance with the HTRC's Non-consumptive Use Research Policy and  HTRC Data Capsules Terms of Use. 

You will see the details for your capusle. From this page, you can start, stop, or delete your capsule. You can also click to connect via Terminal (command line interface) or Remote Desktop (to see your capsule's Ubuntu desktop). 

If you choose connect via Terminal, you will be take to a page showing a command line interface to interact with your capsule. (Note: This option available in Maintenance Mode only.)

If you choose to connect via Remote Desktop, you will be taken to a page from which you can interact with your capsule's desktop. (Note: This option is available in either Maintenance or Secure Mode.)

Please note the following rules for copying and pasting text/commands in the data capsule environment:

• Regardless of your local operating system, use ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste IN the capsule.
• AND if you are using the terminal IN your capsule, regardless of your local operating system, use ctrl-shift-c and ctrl-shift-v
• You cannot copy and paste from you local desktop into the capsule window AND you cannot copy and paste from your capsule to you local desktop.

If you wanted to interact with your capsule via SSH from your personal machine, you can follow the directions to set up that access. 

HathiTrust data you import and/or work with in Secure Mode must be stored on the capsule's Secure Volume, a storage location available in Secure Mode only, in order to persist in a capsule when it's modes are switched or when it is turned off and back on. Data transferred or generated in the capsule in Secure Mode that is not saved to the Secure Volume will be deleted when the capsule switches modes or is turned off and on, for security reasons. 

When viewing your capsule, you will see a blue button to either "Switch to Secure Mode" or "Switch to Maintenance Mode." 

Click the button to switch. You'll see the capsule's state change.

Once it has switched, you'll see that you can click the blue button again to switch modes back. 

Preferred method

HTRC has developed a Python library for loading volumes into the Data Capsule environment: the HTRC Workset Toolkit. The Toolkit is standard in all capsules created after March 18, 2018. If you have an earlier-created capsule then you will need to install or update the Toolkit. 

Make sure you are in secure mode in order to prepare to fetch content into your Data Capsule; it won't work in maintenance mode for security reasons.

You can use the Workset Toolkit's "htrc download" command to transfer the volumes you would like to include in your dataset.

For example, the following command will import the volumes in the HathiTrust collection 'Adventure Novels: G.A. Henty'.

htrc download 'https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=464226859'

You can also curate a list of volumes whose data you would like to import by creating a file containing a HathiTrust volume ID list that you're interested in, with one ID per line. Run the above command replacing the collection URL with your file name.

For example, if you had a file called myvolumes.txt, you would run the following command.

htrc download myvolumes.txt

In the above examples, the data will be transferred to “/media/secure_volume/workset/”. If you want to specify an alternative location, provide an output by including -o and the file path in your command.

Other functions of the Workset Toolkit

You can also use a volume ID, collection URL, or catalog record ID to import volumes. Additionally, you have the option to concatenate files, remove folders, and retrieve metadata using the functions of the Workset Toolkit.

For more examples, see the detailed guide.

For the technical documentation, see: https://htrc.github.io/HTRC-WorksetToolkit/cli.html

Optional method

Researchers can use the HTRC Data API to bring text data into their capsule, and can refer to the HTRC Data API guide for more details.

If you'd like to export results out of the capsule, you must release them from your virtual machine.

First, switch the VM to secure mode in the Portal interface. 

Second, open a terminal in the capsule, navigate to the secure volume by typing:

cd /media/secure_volume

Suppose the file you'd like to release is at /home/demouser/demo/r/Rplots.pdf

You can prepare the result data for release by first adding it the the release list: 

releaseresults add /home/demouser/demo/r/Rplots.pdf

Repeat using this command if you have other files to add.

Finally, to complete the release of your data, type: 

releaseresults done

The files will be delivered via email. You will receive them in the email that you registered for the HTRC Analytics account. The email link will be live for 12 hours.

Shut Down the VM

Go back to  HTRC Analytics, go to "Data Capsules" and click on the "Stop Capsule" button to shut down the VM you'd like to shut.

Delete the VM

If you do not need the capsule any more, you can delete it. On HTRC Analytics, navigate to "Data Capsules", click on the "Delete Capsule" button next to the virtual machine you want to delete.