| Patricia A. Steele Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries Indiana University |
John Price Wilkin Associate University Librarian University of Michigan |
The HathiTrust is a newly formed collaborative digital repository for research libraries. Its initial aspirations are nothing less than building the universal library, beginning with bringing together the content created through large-scale digitization efforts. By the end of this calendar year, the repository will provide at least some level of access to more than 2 million volumes of digitized content, and this number will grow by millions of volumes each year. The HathiTrust effort embeds all of the principles of long-term, secure archiving in a framework devoted to the needs of large research libraries and the institutions of which they are a part.
This briefing will discuss the developments of the HathiTrust to date, as well as the short- and long-term objectives of the HathiTrust. The presenters will discuss the current organizational structure of the enterprise and will attempt to convey a vision of where they hope the HathiTrust will be in five years. Time permitting, this presentation will demonstrate some of the basic access technology of the HathiTrust while discussing functions under development (e.g., services for users with disabilities) and the future enhancement of access strategies (e.g., large-scale full text search).
Handout