The Chronicle of Higher Education on Monday, October 13, 2008, has announced the formation of a giant library to serve as a back-up for Google Books, designated as the HathiTrust.

"The…HathiTrust, …consists of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the 11 universities in the Big Ten Conference and the University of Chicago, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system. The University of Virginia is joining the project, it will be announced today, and officials hope to bring in other colleges as well."

Already HathiTrust  (a shared digital respository ), contains the full text of more than two million books scanned by Google.  However, only about 16 percent of the books in HathiTrust—or about 327,000 volumes—are out of copyright so that their full text can be delivered to all readers.

To read the whole article: http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/5061n.htm

"Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced that it will work together with HathiTrust to increase visibility of and access to items in the HathiTrust’s shared digital repository. HathiTrust is a group of some of the largest research libraries in the US collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections."

"OCLC and HathiTrust will work together to increase online visibility and accessibility of the digital collections by creating WorldCat records describing the content and linking to the collections via WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. The organisations will launch a project in the coming months to develop specifications and determine next steps."

From Knowledgespeak Newsletter, Jan. 29, 2009