Creation of the HathiTrust Digital Library

In October 2008 thirteen universities in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California founded the HathiTrust, a very large scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries, including content digitized via the Google Books project, and Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by member libraries. The name came from the Hindu word for elephant, as in "an elephant never forgets."

♦ As of January 2011 over 50 academic research libraries were members of the HathiTrust. Its website published the following statistics:

7,909,950 total volumes,  4,057,969 book titles, 189,013 serial titles 2,768,482,500 pages,  355 terabytes,  94 miles,  6,427 tons,  1,972,865 volumes (~25% of total) in the public domain.

♦ In March 2012 the HathiTrust website published the following statistics:

10,109,695 total volumes,  5,371,919 book titles, 266,508 serial titles 3,538,393,250 pages,  453 terabytes,  120 miles,  8,214 tons,  2,802,045 volumes (~28% of total) in the public domain.