W&L Joins HathiTrust, Gains Access to Massive Digital Library Membership in HathiTrust allows the W&L community to access millions of digital books that the university does not have in print in the Leyburn, Telford or Law libraries.

By Erica Turman
November 23, 2020

Washington and Lee University recently joined HathiTrust, a partnership of academic and research institutions offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries worldwide. The membership allows the W&L community to access digital books that the university does not have in print in any of its three libraries.

The pandemic played a role in W&L obtaining membership to the system. Now students and faculty, whether at home or on campus, can access books from anywhere in the world.

“Access to such a huge body of digitized books from more than a century of scholarship dramatically improves our ability to gather and understand historical strands of knowledge in nearly any field,” said K.T. Vaughn, Hal F. and Barbra Buckner Higginbotham University Librarian at W&L.

The books accessible in the membership are keyword searchable and can be categorized by user-created selections and downloaded without access limits.

“Librarians are also excited about HathiTrust because it aims to preserve the collective historical record,” Vaughn said. “We don’t have to worry about millions of books at risk of loss due to fire, flood or simple use. HathiTrust helps insure against the significant loss to scholarship that disaster and time both represent.”

Access to HathiTrust is now available for Winter Term classes and research use. Anyone interested in learning more about HathiTrust resources should contact the university’s library (library@wlu.edu) or a W&L librarian.