University Libraries in Google Project to Offer Backup Digital Library - Chronicle.com

University Libraries in Google Project to Offer Backup Digital Library - Chr
onicle.com

A group of major universities has been quietly working for the past two years to build one of the largest online collections of books ever assembled, by pooling the millions of volumes that Google has scanned in its partnership with university libraries.

One of the most important functions of the project, say its leaders, who plan to unveil the giant library today, is to create a stable backup of the digital books should Google go bankrupt or lose interest in the book-searching business.

The project is called HathiTrust, and so far it consists of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the 11 universities in the Big Ten Conference and the University of Chicago, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system. The University of Virginia is joining the project, it will be announced today, and officials hope to bring in other colleges as well.

All of the member universities participate in Google's ambitious effort to work with major libraries and with publishers to scan all the world's books. As part of the partnership, Google employees borrow and scan millions of volumes from each participating library to add them to their Google Book Search, and in return each library gets a digital copy of each of its scanned volumes. Google first announced the library program in 2005 (The Chronicle, January 7, 2005), and it has been steadily adding partners ever since.

Each university library originally planned to manage the digital copies of the scanned books on its own, but through HathiTrust, library officials are now working together to create a shared online collection.