By Liene Karels

Two years after its launch, the HathiTrust Digital Library is raising the bar for collaboration among research libraries. Containing over 7 million volumes from member library collections, HathiTrust is now jointly owned and operated by 52 institutions from the U.S. and Europe, all focused on a common goal – to build an extraordinary digital library that preserves and provides access to the cultural record.

The new members to HathiTrust include the Library of Congress, Stanford University, Arizona State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Madrid, HathiTrust’s first international partner.

“This is an extraordinary moment for research libraries,” said John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust and Associate University Librarian at the University of Michigan. “These remarkable and forward-thinking libraries have come together to create a vast and increasingly comprehensive international digital library.”

The 52 partner institutions will participate in a constitutional convention and formal review of HathiTrust in 2011. At the convention, these institutions will define HathiTrust’s next phase of governance and shape future directions for the partnership.

“The efforts of these libraries will help ensure our ability to preserve the cultural record, both digitally and in print,” said Wilkin. “The breadth of the collaboration is a powerful indicator of the library community’s commitment to this important ideal.”

HathiTrust was launched in 2008 by the 11 University of California libraries and the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), with key support provided by the University of Michigan and Indiana University. Today, HathiTrust has more than tripled the number of volumes held, doubled its initial partnership, and fulfilled many of its initial objectives for repository services and infrastructure.

Some of the partners’ significant achievements include full text search of the entire repository, enhanced services for users with print disabilities, and the deployment of tools and infrastructure to enable ongoing collaborative development of repository services and capabilities.

The addition of these new partners, said Wilkin, adds to the momentum HathiTrust has gained toward fulfilling its mission to “contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.”

Partnering institutions in the HathiTrust include:

Arizona State University

Baylor University

California Digital Library

Columbia University

Cornell University

Dartmouth College

Duke University

Emory University

Harvard University Library

Indiana University

Johns Hopkins University

Library of Congress

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michigan State University

New York Public Library

New York University

North Carolina Central University

North Carolina State University

Northwestern University

The Pennsylvania State University

Princeton University

Purdue University

Stanford University

Texas A&M University

The Ohio State University

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The University of Chicago

The University of Iowa

University of California Berkeley

University of California Davis

University of California Irvine

University of California Los Angeles

University of California Merced

University of California Riverside

University of California San Diego

University of California San Francisco

University of California Santa Barbara

University of California Santa Cruz

University of Illinois

University of Illinois at Chicago

University of Maryland

University of Michigan

University of Minnesota

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Pennsylvania

University of Pittsburgh

University of Utah

University of Virginia

University of Washington

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Utah State University

Yale University

More information, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org/

Liene Karels is a communications specialist for the University of Michigan Libraries.