What HathiTrust does

HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of more than 200 academic and research libraries founded in 2008 by the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the University of California system. It operates the HathiTrust Digital Library, a digital preservation repository holding 19+ million digitized items spanning 400+ languages, with primary data centers at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Indiana University (Indianapolis), each maintaining a 1.4 petabyte spinning-disk storage array. The technical stack includes Apache Solr full-text indexes (12+ terabytes), MariaDB, MongoDB, Perl, Ruby, Docker, Kubernetes, and OAIS/TRAC-compliant preservation infrastructure using METS and PREMIS metadata standards; source code is publicly available on GitHub. The product portfolio spans the core Digital Library platform, the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) for non-consumptive text and data mining (scheduled to sunset end of 2026), the Accessible Text Request Service for print-disabled users, the Emergency Temporary Access Service, the Shared Print Program covering 5.5+ million print monographs across 60+ libraries, the U.S. Federal Documents Program, the Copyright Review Program (1+ million items reviewed), the Metadata Quality Improvement Program, and a 2025-launched Resource Sharing pilot for in-copyright Interlibrary Loan.

Name

HathiTrust

Legal name

HathiTrust

Website

https://hathitrust.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2008

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of 200+ academic and research libraries operating a 19+ million item digital preservation repository, providing long-term preservation, full-text search, and shared collection management services to member institutions globally.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Digital Library Services

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921), Libraries and Archives (519210), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

akta.pro primary industry

Academic & Research Library Operations (College/University Libraries) (EDAEAGAB)

akta.pro secondary industries

Libraries, Archives & Special Collections (BPAGAHAF), Digital Reading Content & eBooks (Leveled Readers, Libraries) (EDAFACAH)

Keywords

• Digital preservation
• Library consortium services
• Academic text mining
• Collection management
• Membership repository

Headquarters

HQ city

Ann Arbor

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Annual Membership Fees: HathiTrust generates revenue primarily through annual membership fees paid by member libraries. The cost allocation model is designed to equitably share costs across the membership. Fees for the majority of members range from $6,600 to $13,000 USD depending on library expenditures and collection details.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries that operates the HathiTrust Digital Library, a large-scale digital preservation repository containing 19+ million digitized books and publications contributed by more than 60 research libraries. The platform provides full-text search, reading access to public domain and open access works, automated copyright-based access controls, emergency temporary access during service disruptions, and supports text and data mining through the HathiTrust Research Center.

Product overview

HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries offering the HathiTrust Digital Library, a unified digital library platform containing 19+ million digitized books and publications. The core platform provides search, access to public domain and open access materials, and preservation services. The product portfolio includes specialized research tools (HathiTrust Research Center/HTRC with Bookworm visualization, Algorithms, Data Capsule, and Extracted Features datasets for text and data mining), access services (Accessible Text Request Service for print-disabled users, Emergency Temporary Access Service for library emergencies), collection management programs (Copyright Review Program, Shared Print Program, U.S. Federal Documents Program, Metadata Quality Improvement Program), and a new Resource Sharing service for interlibrary loan. The HTRC is scheduled to sunset at end of 2026, with some services transitioning to HathiTrust directly.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• HathiTrust Digital Library The primary digital library platform containing 19+ million digitized books and publications from member libraries, offering search, reading access to public domain/open access works, and preservation services for faculty, students, and researchers across 200+ member institutions.
• HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) A research center co-hosted at Indiana University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign enabling large-scale text and data mining analysis of the HathiTrust corpus through tools, services, and datasets for non-profit research and educational uses by member-affiliated researchers.
• Accessible Text Request Service (ATRS) A service allowing users from member libraries who are blind or print-disabled to request copies of any title in the HathiTrust collection, including copyrighted items, for use with adaptive technologies such as screen readers.
• Copyright Review Program A cooperative program with expert reviewers from dozens of institutions examining items to research the copyright status of works and identify public domain materials in the U.S. and internationally, opening access for affected titles.
• Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) A service permitting temporary, emergency access to the HathiTrust collection for member libraries during service disruptions caused by events ranging from global pandemics to climate change impacts.
• Shared Print Program A distributed, shared network of print collections retained in tandem with HathiTrust's digital preservation services, linking preservation of print and digital collections to reduce overall collection management costs, with 60+ participating libraries committing to retain more than 5.5 million print monographs.
• U.S. Federal Documents Program An initiative to develop the largest independent collection of digitized and preserved U.S. Federal Documents from dozens of agencies, expanding access and preserving government publications for democracy and scholarship.
• Metadata Quality Improvement Program (MQIP) A program providing member libraries that contribute content with special access to enhance their own catalogs by correcting metadata records, improving discoverability of items across the scholarly ecosystem.
• HathiTrust Resource Sharing A pilot service that lawfully expands access to in-copyright materials through Interlibrary Loan (ILL), enabling member libraries to share physical and digital holdings more effectively.
• HathiTrust + Bookworm A visualization tool that displays word usage trends across millions of volumes in the HathiTrust collection, enabling scholars to discover new textual patterns across the entire corpus including copyrighted and public domain volumes.
• Extracted Features Dataset A derived dataset produced by HTRC containing extracted textual features such as word counts, part-of-speech tagging, and sentiment scores for volumes in the collection, enabling quantitative analysis of the corpus. Version 2.5 is the final version being produced, with updates through December 2026.
• HTRC Data Capsule A special access service through HTRC providing secure computational environments for researchers to analyze in-copyright materials without redistribution risk. Service is being discontinued as of September 30, 2026 as part of HTRC sunset.

Quantifiable outcome

• 19+ million digitized items preserved for long-term access
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers6 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration2 records

AI capability5 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Eleven partnerships are on record, tiered core, key and supporting.

• Big Ten Academic Alliance (originally Committee on Institutional Cooperation)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2008The 12 universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance were among the founding members of HathiTrust in 2008, partnering with the University of California system to create the collaborative digital library. The partnership was established to ensure digitized collections and the libraries that steward them remain strong and serve scholarship into the future.
• University of California System (11 libraries)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2008The 11 libraries of the University of California system partnered with the Big Ten Academic Alliance to found HathiTrust in 2008, establishing the collaborative that now preserves 19+ million digitized items.
• University of MichigancoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe University of Michigan serves as the administrative and legal host of HathiTrust. All employees of HathiTrust are employees of the University of Michigan, which executes agreements and contracts for HathiTrust's activities and hosts the preservation infrastructure for digital content deposited by members.
• Indiana UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndiana University co-hosts the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) with the University of Illinois and hosts some technical infrastructure for HathiTrust.
• University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaigncoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign co-hosts the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), engaging in research and development for text analysis of massive digital libraries and providing digital humanities support.
• California Digital LibrarykeyTechnology or IntegrationThe California Digital Library administers Zephir, HathiTrust's metadata management system, and provides in-kind contributions to HathiTrust operations.
• GooglekeyTechnology or IntegrationGoogle has digitized approximately 95% of the HathiTrust collection through its mass digitization project. Libraries contributed their digitized copies to the shared HathiTrust collection.
• Internet ArchivesupportingTechnology or IntegrationHathiTrust has developed workflows to accommodate ingest of content from the Internet Archive efficiently and at scale, alongside Google digitization.
• Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST)keyStrategic or Co-development PartnerHathiTrust partnered with WEST and the California Digital Library on a pilot initiative to enable greater cross-program collaboration in shared print, developing the AGUA serials-only shared print dashboard to include HathiTrust shared print monograph commitments.
• University of California Shared Print InitiativeskeyStrategic or Co-development PartnerHathiTrust partnered with UC Shared Print Initiatives alongside WEST to develop collaborative shared print management capabilities through the AGUA dashboard, helping HathiTrust members manage their local collections using shared print data across three programs.
• 200+ Member LibrariescoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorOver 200 academic and research libraries from around the world act as member-governors, content contributors, and distribution channels for HathiTrust services. Members range from large research universities to community colleges and consortia across North America, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Scale indicators11 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Internet Archive: A nonprofit digital library offering preservation, lending, and universal access to digitized books, audio, video, and web pages. Directly comparable to HathiTrust as a non-profit mass-digitization library serving researchers and the public.
• JSTOR: Subscription-based digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources serving academic and research libraries. Comparable in serving the same member-library customer base with digital scholarly content and preservation services.
• Portico: A nonprofit digital preservation service for scholarly content, archiving journals, books, and other materials for participating libraries. Directly comparable as a preservation-focused service for academic libraries.
• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): A nonprofit digital library aggregating content from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S. Comparable as a collaborative digital library serving public and research audiences with aggregated collections.
• LOCKSS (Stanford Libraries): An open-source digital preservation system developed at Stanford that enables libraries to preserve digitized content via distributed networks. Comparable as a digital preservation technology and service for research libraries.

Regional players

• California Digital Library: A University of California digital library that administers Zephir (HathiTrust's metadata system) and operates its own digital collections and shared print initiatives. Comparable as a major university-based digital library serving research institutions.

Broad incumbents

• Google Books: Google's mass-digitization and book search platform, which digitized ~95% of the HathiTrust corpus. Comparable as a large-scale book digitization and search infrastructure overlapping heavily with HathiTrust content.
• ProQuest: A large commercial provider of aggregated academic content, dissertations, and research databases sold to academic libraries. Comparable in delivering digital scholarly content to the same institutional buyer base.
• OCLC (WorldCat): A global library cooperative providing cataloging, metadata, and resource-sharing infrastructure to thousands of libraries. Comparable as a nonprofit library-services organization serving academic and research institutions.

Emerging players

• Project MUSE: A nonprofit platform providing access to scholarly humanities and social sciences books and journals from university presses. Comparable in serving academic libraries with curated scholarly digital content.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/hathitrust
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/hathitrust

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles8 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about HathiTrust