UNIVERSITY PARK – Each month new Penn State titles are added to Google Books. “Sacred and Legendary Art,” “Applied Motion Study,” “Hopes and Fears for Art,” “The Afterglow of European Travel,” “The Castle Builders,” “Aliens or Americans” and “Memorials of Prison Life” are a few of the books now available online.
Over the past four years, Penn State has expanded its collection by millions, greatly widening possibilities for research and opening access to valuable out-of-copyright collections from other institutions. This virtual expansion of the Libraries’ collections was made possible through an agreement entered in 2007 by the provosts of the CIC (the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago) and Google, which aimed to digitize up to 10 million volumes in the Google Book Project. From the thousands of volumes sent by Penn State to Google for the project, the out-of-copyright materials have been deposited into the “HathiTrust,” a repository founded by the CIC in 2008. Through the agreement, Penn State has joint access to more than 1.7 million full-text digital books that are out of copyright, including many rare gems from sister institutions of the Big Ten and other universities, including Columbia, Princeton and the University of California.
“When we think about our library collection we have to think of it more globally. All the material in Hathi is also part of our collection, no matter who digitized it,” says Lisa German, associate dean for collections, information and access services. “Anyone has full access to those books, including alumni. Alumni can go to the HathiTrust and look at any of the digitized materials, not just Penn State’s.
“This is an extension of making our collections accessible, which is one of the goals of our strategic plan. And not only are we making the collections accessible to our own students, but collectively, libraries are making our materials accessible to all students. HathiTrust really allows our students to have access to more materials than they’ve ever had before. As one of the partners in HathiTrust, Penn State is able to contribute to its governance and help steer its future direction,” adds German.
German says that with the infrastructure now in place to support digital scholarship for print materials, the possibilities are almost limitless for supporting different kinds of media. “Right now it is just printed media but who knows what the future will bring?” she says.
Changes in the information landscape are happening rapidly, and Penn State librarians are creating this new landscape. “It is an exciting time for librarians, and our collection extends well past the walls of our libraries,” says German.
To visit HathiTrust, go online. To read more about Penn State’s involvement in the Google Book Project and to see the monthly update of recently added books, go online.
For more information, call 814-863-4240.