Portending a Universal Digital Library, HathiTrust Launches Ambitious Repository

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 10/14/2008 1:04:00 PM

• Ambitious effort harnesses some 24 top libraries
• Repository offers close to one billion pages
• At last, a blueprint for the universal digital library?

(This article first appeared in the Oct. 14 issue of the LJ Academic Newswire.)

In what may be the library community’s most ambitious digital collaboration so far, some two-dozen large research libraries this week announced the launch of a single, shared repository of digital collections, including scanned books, articles, special collections, and a range of “born digital” materials. The venture is called HathiTrust (pronounced HAH-tee), incorporating the Hindi word for elephant (Hathi), to evoke both the “immensity” of the undertaking, officials said, as well the elephant’s association with memory, wisdom, and strength.

"This effort combines the expertise and resources of some of the nation’s foremost research libraries,” John Wilkin, associate university librarian of the University of Michigan (UM) and the newly named executive director of HathiTrust, said in an announcement, “and holds even greater promise as it seeks to grow beyond the initial partners.” The HathiTrust builds on, and rebrands Michigan’s MBooks initiative.

Immense mission
HahtiTrust was launched jointly by the12-university Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the 11 university libraries of the University of California (UC) system, with UC’s participation coordinated by the California Digital Library (CDL). The University of Virginia has also announced that it will join the venture.

As of today, HathiTrust contains more than two million books, and roughly a billion pages, nearly 16 percent of which are in the public domain and available to the public to read online. Materials protected by copyright, although not available, are nevertheless “given the full range of digital archiving services,” to allow for reliable preservation. Content is expected to grow rapidly as current members and new partners contribute more digitized content.

To oversee the sprawling effort, HathiTrust has established an Executive Management Group, comprised of the deans of libraries and Chief Information Officers of the founding institutions; an Operational Advisory Board to guide the development of the venture’s operations; and a Strategic Advisory Board, in formation, which will consist of representatives from several new participating libraries, along with representatives from the CIC and UC. The repository is financed by members and is currently run as a separately-maintained budget held within the UM budget, and managed by the Executive Management group. HathiTrust is funded for an initial five-year period, which began in January 2008.

The universal library realized?
The launch of HathiTrust represents a watershed moment. After years of scattered digitization efforts and uncertain funding, the venture suggests libraries are at last prepared to realize the true value of their collections in a digital world, and are moving on a collaborative strategy, guided by library values such as access and preservation.

“Before this collaboration, the collections in each library existed in isolation,” Wilkin said, “Now we are bringing them together, pooling resources and eliminating redundancies and producing a valuable research tool that will be greater than the sum of its parts.” In addition, the venture has made partners of various competing digitization efforts now at work, including the library-friendly Open Content Alliance, and, of course—the 800 pound gorilla to libraries’ elephant—Google Book Search.

Google, will eventually contribute some ten million scanned volumes in total, as part of members’ partnerships with Google Book Search. While HathiTrust is a collaborative venture, UM’s role here is not to be underestimated: books scanned by Google are mostly available only through the Google Book Search interface, however, Michigan’s deal to have Google scan its entire collection, over seven million books, included “library copy,” of scanned works, which Michigan has used to create the valuable MBooks program. The library copy provision, which has rankled publishers, has been excised in Google’s recent library deals. With the launch of HathiTrust, Michigan has essentially expanded access to its scans.

Read more Newswire stories:

On "OA Day," Open Access Publishers Announce Formation of a Trade Association

In Europe, a Collaborative Effort Will Gather Data on Research and Repositories

Upcoming LJ Survey Finds Librarian Pay on the Rise

Library Journal Seeks Nominations for 2009 Movers & Shakers

People