The University of Delaware Library has announced that it has become one of the latest members of HathiTrust, a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form.
The University of Delaware Library plans to contribute public domain volumes digitised through in-house projects to the HathiTrust.
Launched in 2008, the HathiTrust has a growing membership currently comprising more than 60 partners. Over the last two years, the partners have contributed more than eight million items to the digital library, digitised from their library collections through a number of means including Google, the Internet Archive digitisation and in-house initiatives. More than two million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the web.
The HathiTrust serves a dual role. First, as a trusted repository it guarantees the long-term preservation of the materials it holds, providing the expert curation and consistent access long associated with research libraries. Second, as a service for partners, the HathiTrust offers persistent access to the digital collections. This includes viewing, downloading, and searching access to in copyright volumes. Specialised features are also available which facilitate access by persons with print disabilities, and allow users to gather subsets of the digital library into 'collections' that can be searched and browsed.
