Plans for the HathiTrust Research Center – HathiTrust Digital Library

"HathiTrust will suspend funding for the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) at the end of 2026 to allocate resources toward new programs that leverage emerging technologies to enhance our services and collection. We have begun working on transition plans with HTRC leadership and staff, including an evaluation of existing services and activities. While we aim to maintain researcher access to the corpus for analysis, the specifics of these services will be determined during the transition.

This was not an easy decision: the Research Center has been an important part of our overall strategy and services for over a decade. HTRC staff and researchers have, all along, been at the leading edge of large-scale computing and textual data analysis, and advanced new models for secure and lawful analysis of copyrighted materials. For this and other work HTRC is highly regarded and I am proud that it has enhanced the field of digital scholarship and laid a strong foundation for our future work.

​​HathiTrust has financially supported the Research Center, yet many of our members have rarely utilized HTRC’s services. Although some researchers have extensively used the collection for textual analysis, our investments have not benefited all members as intended. We now realize that the original funding and operational model for HTRC—consisting of researcher-led activities funded by external, in-kind, and HathiTrust support—is no longer suitable. Moving forward, we believe that integrating the development of scalable, production-level services and enhancements of our text and metadata into HathiTrust’s core operations will better meet our goals.

We are still developing our longer term plans, but we expect to: 

• Establish a new organizational structure under HathiTrust leadership and direction to integrate the expertise and operations that have been largely external to our core organization. The 2025 budget, recently approved by the membership, includes funding for new HathiTrust staff to plan and carry out more of this work.
• Fund HTRC — including its staff —  at current levels through the end of 2026 as we work through the transition.
• Evaluate HTRC’s existing services and functions to inform service planning. This evaluation has just begun, so we do not yet know which services will continue, though we expect to have more information soon.
• Minimize disruption for researchers. In the near term, current HTRC services will continue with no change for users. We will communicate anticipated changes to users with ample time to respond and to offer resources to support ongoing research when necessary.
• Collaborate with partners and other organizations as we develop and offer computational services for users. It is too early to specify what these services will be or what collaboration structures will be appropriate...."