What is HathiTrust and How Can it
Make a Difference?
‘Sourcing and Scaling’ brought to the
collective collection
What is HathiTrust?
HathiTrust is attempting nothing short of creating a
comprehensive repository of published literature,
primarily though not exclusively through digitization.
Language Distribution (1)
* All data was current as of March 20
Language Distribution (2)
The next 40
languages make
up ~13% of total
Publication Date
Originating Institution
Content over time
HathiTrust is about collections, writ large, and not about
Google digitization.
The first order of HathiTrust business is long-term
preservation of this digital content, and we don’t
believe in preservation without access.
HathiTrust takes the business of sustainability seriously,
with regard to governance, finances and technology.
The HathiTrust Business Model, v.1: Depositor Pays
all of the reasonable costs of sustaining the archive—
including replacement costs and a sort of insurance policy—
are combined to create a sort of atomic cost unit (in this
case, a GB of content)
What are “all of the reasonable costs of sustaining the archive”?
How much does it cost?
Governance
Budget, Finances
Decision-making
Policy
Enterprise
Management
Repository
Administration
Repository
Administration
Communication
and Coordination
with partner
institutions
Hardware
configuration and
maintenance
Data management
(content storage,
backup, integrity
checks, deletion)
Project
management
Planning
Web and
application server
configuration and
maintenance
Security
Hardware selection
and replacement
Content and
Metadata
specifications
Permissions
Rights
Management
Bibliographic
Data
Management
Copyright
determination
Entity description
(record-level)
Copyright review
Object
identification
(item-level)
Copyright
information
management
(database)
Data availability
Collection
Development
Digital
• Expansion beyond
books and journals
(born-digital,
images and maps,
audio)
• Selection of
content (for nonGoogle volume
ingest and pilots
projects)
Print
• Cloud Library (effect
of digital on print)
Rightsholder
permissions
Disaster Recovery
Logging
Processes for
ensuring content
integrity
e-Commerce
Print on Demand
Content Ingest
Content Access
Quality
Assurance
User Services
Transformation
PageTurner
Quality Review
Usability
Validation
Collection Builder
Content
Certification
User support
(helpdesk)
Large-scale Search
Financial
contributions
of partners
Research Center
Bibliographic
Catalog
APIs
Outreach
Project website
Monthly
newsletter
Papers and
presentations
HathiTrust Functional
Framework
Communication
with potential
partners
Surveys, general
inquiries
Repository
evaluation and
audit (e.g.,
DRAMBORA,
TRAC)
Legal
Risk management
(use of materials)
Partner
agreements
Advocacy
What is the cost of this atomic unit, the GB, and how
does that relate to the content we’re storing?
What are replacement costs and an insurance policy?
High cost is off-set by large benefit
Collective collections have their benefits
The HathiTrust Business Model, v.2: Costs based on
holdings overlap and the perceived benefits we derive
an ARL institution that wishes to use
HathiTrust as part of a larger strategy—
part of a “cloud” strategy
new cost model: http://www.hathitrust.org/cost
For public domain volumes:
(PD*X*C)/N
For a given incopyright volume:
IC=(C*X)/H
sharing in the curation; having a voice in shaping the future
But how can HathiTrust make a difference??? (x3)
driving down costs
reducing bibliographic
indeterminacy
making meaningful
decisions about
formats and quality
Collective digital curation
increasing discoverability
consolidating development talent
improving
strength of
archiving
a means by which to associate all of our holdings of print
Collective print curation
perform record-keeping in a coordinated way
improve description
Subsidiary benefits
quantify problems
exerting collective attention to solving problems
scale!
“transfer resource[s] away from 'infrastructure'
and towards user engagement.”
Lorcan Dempsey