June 9, 2022
The HathiTrust Copyright Review Program has met a milestone: the review of more than 1,000,000 books! The HathiTrust Copyright Review Program launched in 2008 with three consecutive IMLS National Leadership grants to responsibly ascertain copyright status of works in the HathiTrust collection. On June 2, HathiTrust reached the review of its 1 millionth HathiTrust item, bringing the total number of U.S. public domain determinations in the collection to 570,594.
“Our fundamental mission is to preserve the scholarly and cultural record and permit reading access to the collection to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law. The Copyright Review Program is paramount to delivering on that mission,” says HathiTrust Executive Director, Mike Furlough.
The program to date has relied on more than 80,000 hours of in-kind staff time from HathiTrust member libraries. The Copyright Review Teams have worked on projects to review U.S. Renewal Era books, U.S. state government documents, Australia-Canada-United Kingdom monographs and government documents, and books lacking clear publication data.
Because of HathiTrust member libraries’ commitment to the HathiTrust Copyright Review Program, hundreds of thousands of books are now available for full view reading access. The program has helped HathiTrust reach the goal of offering 7 million full-view public domain volumes.
HathiTrust Copyright Review Program Manager, Kristina Hall says, “More than 200 people have worked over the past fourteen years to make this valuable contribution to the HathiTrust membership and to readers and researchers around the world. Though there is more to do, we have accomplished what was once a far away dream.”
More than tens of thousands of books await a review in Crown Copyright and U.S. monographs projects, and planning is underway to expand expertise to review periodicals. With the help and support of the HathiTrust membership, HathiTrust aims to achieve the same high level of success in the coming years.
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