Get Connected

[]We mention the Internet Archive a lot because we have a number of digitized items in their system, but they're not the only repository around. If you can't find what you're looking for at IA, it might be time to give the HathiTrust digital library a try.

HathiTrust began in 2008 as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository to archive and share their digitized collections. HathiTrust has quickly expanded to include additional partners and to provide those partners with an easy means to archive their digital content.

The initial focus of the partnership has been on preserving and providing access to digitized book and journal content from the partner library collections. This includes both in copyright and public domain materials digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft, as well as through in-house initiatives. The partners aim to build a comprehensive archive of published literature from around the world and develop shared strategies for managing and developing their digital and print holdings in a collaborative way.

The primary community that HathiTrust serves are the members (faculty, students, and users) of its partners libraries, but the materials in HathiTrust are available to all to the extent permitted by law and contracts, providing the published record as a public good to users around the world.

As of this spring, the HathiTrust archive contains more than 5 million distinct book titles and over 250,000 serial publications, with about 28% of those materials in the public domain. The partnership community now comprises dozens of preeminent universities and libraries from across the country (and beyond) including Ivy League, Big Ten, and University of California schools, the Triangle Research Libraries Network in North Carolina, NYU, New York Public Library, Texas A&M, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and more. Some of the functionality of the site is restricted to member institutions, but non-member users can sign up for University of Michigan "friend" accounts to access more of the options in the HathiTrust system.

Go search the HathiTrust database, or take a look at their page on Using the Digital Library for more information.

--Robin