About
HTRC operates under a non-consumptive research paradigm: HTRC makes available the collection for computational analysis, while remaining clearly within the bounds of the fair use rights courts have recognized as applying to text analysis. The Center is committed to breaking new ground in the areas of non-consumptive text mining, allowing scholars to fully utilize content of the HathiTrust Library.
Individual access and preservation are important concerns for HathiTrust. It allows users to search for and build collections of digitized works, and to read those in the public domain.
The Research Center’s focus is on the aggregate strengths: what can we learn from so many books? Digitization has enabled large-scale questions that we couldn’t ask before, and the Research Center is here to help you ask them while working within the restrictions of intellectual property law.
In late October 2024, HathiTrust Executive Director Mike Furlough announced that HathiTrust will cease data access and funding the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) at the end of 2026. For now, HTRC will continue its current services and support, but eventually, some of these services and data (still to be determined) may be retired or integrated into the general HathiTrust Digital Library.
For up-to-date information on the transition and sunsetting process, please visit our HTRC Transition Guide.
After 2026, The HTRC team plans to continue its own research agenda in text-data mining, cultural analytics with large text corpora and cultural heritage collections, feature extraction, and non-consumptive research methods. We also hope to continue providing services, data sets, and community support to the research community.
While these announced changes will be challenging for HTRC, they also present many exciting opportunities, such as working with new partners and expanding the focus of our work beyond the HathiTrust corpus. Over the next two years, in addition to assisting HathiTrust with its transition, we will be working diligently to develop a new identity and organizational structure for our future work. We welcome ideas and feedback from our many users, collaborators, and funders as we plan this exciting future.
For more information on our research output and impact see the links below:
Advanced Collaborative Support: Assisting on specialized questions
HTRC Advanced Collaborative Support offers specialized expertise, developer time, and compute resources to researchers who apply for and are awarded support.
Scholarly Commons: Training researchers
HTRC Scholarly Commons provides training and researcher support for those teaching with and using HTRC. Affiliates of the Scholarly Commons are available for workshops and webinars, and they will also consult about specific scholarly projects or pedagogical applications.
Monthly Maintenance
HTRC Analytics is inaccessible the second week of every month, from 7 a.m. ET Sunday through at least 12 p.m. ET Monday during routine, planned maintenance. HTRC services are unavailable during this time, including the HTRC Analytics site and Data Capsules environment. Please refer to the documentation for upcoming dates, and directions for how capsule users can ensure their data is safely stored during maintenance.
Senior Leadership Team
- John Walsh
- HTRC Director
- Indiana University
- J. Stephen Downie
- HTRC Co-Director
- University of Illinois
- Samitha Liyanage
- HTRC Associate Director for Cyber Infrastructure Operations
- Indiana University
- Janet Swatscheno
- HTRC Associate Director for Outreach and Education Services
- HathiTrust
- Glen Layne-Worthey
- HTRC Associate Director for Research Support Services
- University of Illinois
HTRC Staff
Indiana University
- Uma Maheshwar Katta, Research Software Engineer
University of Illinois
- Ryan Dubnicek, Digital Humanities Specialist
- Deren Kudeki, Visiting Research Programmer