Digital libraries: HathiTrust - the “scientific”alternative to Google

From November, 20 the users of the HathiTrust library will get access to 4,6 mil. digitized books and documents.  

The project named after the wise elephant Hathi from the book of Joseph Rudyard Kipling “The Jungle Book” was launched in October 2008. It was initiated as the universal scientific library. Today the library brings together the digitized archival collections of 25 major university libraries of the USA, among them the universities of California, Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and other states.

Many libraries who agreed to take part in the project’s work had earlier collaborated with Google, which had been working under Google Book Search project. As the libraries possessed the copies of digitized for Google books it became possible to share them with HathiTrust. The library’s repository also received the books, digitized in the framework of Yahoo! Open Content Alliance project.

Today the digital library HathiTrust has a single archival catalogue, accessible to all the Universities of the World. The catalogue has been continuously increasing, every month it gets hundreds of digitized editions.

The library will provide access to all not copyright protected resources. The digitized book copies, which represent the public property, were already in 2008 placed on the websites of the Universities who participate in the project.