HathiTrust currently supports ingest of digital book and journal content, and similar book-like materials (e.g., manuscripts). The guidelines and specifications below pertain to these materials specifically. HathiTrust partners are also engaged in pilot projects to provide support for digital audio and image content, as well as born-digital publications. Further information, including policies and specifications surrounding these additional content types, will be forthcoming.
Ingest
Ingest of digital (book-like) objects and associated metadata is performed at the University of Michigan (UM). The digital objects are then replicated to HathiTrust's active mirror site in Indiana, and stored on backup tape. Information about HathiTrust's technical infrastructure can be found at http://www.hathitrust.org/technology. HathiTrust's policies on deposit are available in our Guidelines for Deposit.
New Digitization
Institutions that are preparing to engage in digitization projects and wish to comply with HathiTrust specifications should consult the University of Michigan digitization specifications.
Existing Digitized Content
HathiTrust has established mechanisms to accommodate the ingest of content from Google and the Internet Archive efficiently and at scale, such that there are no costs associated with ingest from these sources.
HathiTrust also supports ingest of book and journal content digitized locally by institutions or as part of vended projects. For this content, we would like institutions to undertake the content or metadata transformations that may be needed to meet HathiTrust specifications prior to submitting content. We provide tools to aid in this process. The Ingest Tools page includes detailed content specifications, a help address for assistance in using the tools, and a link to an email group individuals can join to receive updates on the tools.
How to Proceed
Please see our Ingest Checklist for information on the next steps in deposit. If you have any questions, or are ready to proceed with deposit, please contact feedback@issues.hathitrust.org.