Digitization, open access and the internet aid UCLA’s return of books looted by Nazis | UCLA

"For two decades the Jewish Museum in Prague, or JMP, has undertaken a global search for lost publications from the city’s Jewish Community Library, which was looted and shuttered by Nazi occupiers during World War II. With the recent emphasis on digitization of collections by academic libraries, including UCLA’s, the museum’s work has become a lot easier and more fruitful. The JMP’s efforts to repatriate these stolen items have increased in intensity as anyone capable of using an online search tool can access these vast online repositories.

UCLA Library is one of the earliest and largest contributors to one such repository, the HathiTrust — a collaborative of academic research libraries that have thus far digitized 17 million volumes and made them full-text-searchable...."