PRESS RELEASE

November 8, 2010

CONTACT: Eric Bartheld
301-314-0964
ebarthel@umd.edu

University of Maryland Libraries join HathiTrust digital library

College Park, MD -- University of Maryland Libraries have become the newest member of HathiTrust, a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating in an extraordinary digital library initiative to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form.

Launched in 2008, the HathiTrust has a growing membership currently comprising more than two dozen partners, who have already contributed nearly 7 million volumes to the digital library, digitized from their library collections. Close to 1.5 million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the Web.

“HathiTrust will be the digital library of the future,” says Patricia Steele, dean of the University of Maryland Libraries. “It’s where we will turn for many of the works now on our shelves, so it’s important for Maryland to be members of the community building and supporting it.”

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 commitment to access long associated with research libraries. Second, as a service for partners and a public good, HathiTrust offers persistent access to the digital collections. This includes viewing, downloading, and searching access to public domain volumes, and searching access to volumes protected by copyright.

Specialized 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.

HathiTrust was named for the Hindi word for elephant, hathi, symbolic of the qualities of memory, wisdom, and strength evoked by elephants, as well as the huge undertaking of congregating the digital collections of libraries in the United States and beyond.

HathiTrust is funded by the partner libraries and governed by members of the libraries through an executive Committee and a strategic advisory board. More information on HathiTrust is available at: http://www.hathitrust.org/.

The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library system in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area. The eight-library system supports the teaching, learning and research needs of University of Maryland students and faculty.