Google often says that it likes to take the long-term view of things. But Google’s idea of long term does not appear to be long enough for some librarians, who tend to equate long term with forever, at least when it comes to preserving books.
On Monday, a group of major libraries that are participating in Google’s Library Project, said they are working together to create what amounts to a publicly-accessible backup of the digital library that Google is creating. The project, which is called HathiTrust, includes libraries at 12 Midwestern universities like the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois, and the 11 libraries of the University of California system. (Hathi is Hindi for “elephant,” an animal that is said to never forget.)
In the Google Books Library Project, the Internet giant has been scanning the collections of several large libraries. The company gives users access to the complete text of books that are in the public domain, and to snippets of books that are protected by copyrights. Google also gives each library a copy of the books it digitized from that library.
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