I recently came across a project that, like Google Books, is committed to building a massive digital library containing millions of volumes. Here is what the mission statement from their website:

“As a digital repository for the nation’s great research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the immense collections of partner institutions.

HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections. Partnership is open to all who share this grand vision.”

Of course, when I read announcements like that, you know what I am thinking…Public Domain books! Of HathiTrust’s 4.6 million volumes already scanned, 708,000 are in the Public Domain and available at their site in full text view. While they do not offer full text downloads, the books and periodicals are available in PDF and TXT formats as individual pages. You can search the the HathiTrust Catalog HERE:

HathiTrust

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