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HathiTrust: A Digital Library: About HathiTrust

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.

Currently Digitized

  • 14,511,378 total volumes
  • 7,273,407 book titles
  • 398,099 serial titles
  • 5,078,982,300 pages
  • 650 terabytes
  • 172 miles
  • 11,790 tons
  • 5,571,884 volumes(~38% of total) in the public domain
View visualizations of HathiTrust
call numbers, languages, and dates

(Updated 05/11/2016)

Benefits of Partnership

Partner institutions (like UTK) as well as their users gain many benefits from joining HathiTrust!

    • Improved downloading permissions (full volumes for works not in copyright)
    • Ability to create and save collections
    • Access to text-enabled PDFs regardless of copyright status for users with print disabilities (applies only to works owned by UTK Libraries)
    • Access to full-text of titles owned by UTK Libraries that are brittle or otherwise unusable, regardless of copyright status, as covered under US Copyright Section 108

Visit HathiTrust's website for more institutional benefits

What is HathiTrust?

HathiTrust is a partnership of over 85 (and growing!) research institutions and libraries worldwide. This partnership results in an immense collection of digital resources, ensuring that the resources are securely preserved and available for access and use both now and in the future.

Originally established in 2008, HathiTrust works to provide “published record as a public good to users around the world” as much as possible within copyright law.

HathiTrust vs. Google Books

Features Google Books Project HathiTrust
Numbers 15 million items 10 million items and is growing
Content Type books, journals, magazines, reports, and govenment documents books, journals, magazines, reports, musical scores, and govenment documents
Organization Google owns the Google Book Project and decides how to manage it partnership of libraries and institutions, with membership and shared governance
Full-Text Search full-text search within all the content; browse to sections containing the search terms full-text search within all the content; pages where terms are found are displayed
Full-Text Download full-text download of the whole item for those items that out of copyright full-text download for members of HT of the whole item for those items that are out of copyright
Copyright status does not work on identifying copyright status of "orphan" works will work on identifying copyright status of "orphan" works

WorldCat Records

FAQ about WorldCat records.

 MARC records in WorldCat that lead to the project's "landing page" ; there will sometimes be duplicate records; leads to links to holidng libraries MARC records in WorldCat that lead to the project's "landing page" ; there will sometimes be duplicate records; leads to links to holidng libraries
Long term archiving and reformatting as needed of full text Not a key part of the mission Is a key part of the mission
Replacement of library material Not a source of replacements for missing library materials Is a source of replacements for missing library materials, under US Copyright Section 108

Table courtesy of Barbara DeFelice and William Fontaine, Dartmouth College.

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