Lafayette has become the first liberal arts college to join HathiTrust, a cooperative of academic and research libraries seeking to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form. The College is also one of just four liberal arts institutions to approve an open access resolution which allows the public to view Lafayette faculty journal publications in a freely accessible, permanent digital repository.
Launched in 2008, HathiTrust has a growing membership currently comprising 50 partners from the US and Europe. Partner libraries have already contributed more than eight million volumes to the digital library, pooled from content digitised by Google Books and the Internet Archive, as well as local digitisation efforts.
More than two million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the web. HathiTrust guarantees the long-term preservation of the materials it holds, providing the expert curation and consistent access long associated with research libraries.
As a HathiTrust partner, enhanced access will be available for Lafayette students, faculty, and staff with a Network ID and password. Enhanced access includes the ability to download complete PDFs of public domain books, the option to create and save collections of items in HathiTrust, and full text access for visually impaired users.
Lafayette's open access resolution puts the College at the forefront of the open access movement. Among liberal arts institutions, only Oberlin College, Trinity University, and Rollins College have adopted similar policies.
Under the resolution, faculty members grant the College permission to make the articles they author and co-author available through the Lafayette Digital Repository, as allowed by copyright agreements and unless that person chooses to opt out. The resolution, which was approved by the faculty in the spring, will take effect at the start of the 2011-12 academic year.
The repository already contains more than 150 faculty articles. It is indexed by all major Internet search engines, including Google, so results from these search engines can lead users directly to a relevant article in the repository.
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