Allegheny College has become the latest member of HathiTrust, a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating in a digital library initiative to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form.
Over the last four years, the partners have contributed more than 10 million volumes to the digital library, digitised from their library collections through a number of means including Google and Internet Archive digitisation and in-house initiatives. More than 3 million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the Web.
HathiTrust serves a dual role. 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, it offers persistent access to the digital collections. This includes viewing, downloading and searching access to public domain volumes, and searching access to copyright volumes. Specialised features are also available that facilitate access by persons with print disabilities and that allow users to gather subsets of the digital library into 'collections' that can be searched and browsed.
