SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

June 29, 2016 by Gary Price

New HathiTrust and NFB Partnership Will Make More Than 14 Million Digital Books Accessible to Blind and Print-Disabled Users

June 29, 2016 by Gary Price

From HathiTrust:

More than 14 million digital books will soon be made available to blind and print-disabled users, thanks to a new collaboration involving the National Federation of the Blind and the HathiTrust Digital Library, a digital repository hosted at the University of Michigan.
When launched, the program will dramatically increase the availability of books for users who are blind or print-disabled. According to the NFB, currently less than 5 percent of all published works are estimated to be available to the blind, most of which are popular titles.
NFB President Mark Riccobono says the effort will be an important advancement that will specifically benefit print-disabled students and scholars within the academic community.
“While most barriers that blind people face are artificial ones created by low expectations, access to the printed word has historically been a great challenge,” he said. “This collaboration will, for the first time, make millions of books available to blind readers across the nation, giving us access to more books in a single repository than we have ever had. The significance of this development cannot be overstated, and we are delighted to work with HathiTrust to transform this dream into reality.”
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a digital preservation repository with more than 100 institutional academic and research partners that is housed at U-M. Their online archive, a major portion of which was scanned by Google, currently contains millions of digitized titles in different languages from libraries around the world. Users can search not only by title, author or subject matter, but also via page-by-page content within a book.
“Supporting print-disabled users has been a focus of HathiTrust since the very beginning, and we have long provided students at HathiTrust member schools with access to our collection” said Mike Furlough, executive director of HathiTrust. “The collaboration with NFB is an important turning point, because we are now striving to help non-academic print-disabled users for the first time.”
Over the coming year, NFB and HathiTrust will collaborate to plan and implement these services. User eligibility will be determined by criteria used by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and similar services authorized under U.S. law.
According to Furlough, HathiTrust currently provides a similar service to qualified print-disabled students at its member schools. The new program will expand this service to allow similarly qualified users not affiliated with HathiTrust schools access to full-text works in the HathiTrust collection.
NFB and HathiTrust, like the federally operated National Library Service, will lawfully and securely make books available to qualified people in the U.S. who have print disabilities.

Filed under: Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Interactive Tools, Libraries, National Libraries, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Preservation

SHARE:

lj

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

AI Tools Are Generating Convincing Misinformation. Engaging With Them Means Being on High Alert & More News Headlines

AI Tools Are Generating Convincing Misinformation. Engaging With Them Means Being on High Alert (via The Conversation) Just Launched: Historical Representation at American House Museums Web Archive (via Columbia University ...

American Library Association Reports Record Number of Demands to Censor Library Books and Materials in 2022: Book Challenges...

From the American Library Association: The American Library Association (ALA) today released new data documenting* 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book ...

Penn State University Libraries: Expanded Judy Chicago Research Portal Relaunches With Five Unified Collections

From a PSU Libraries Blog Post: Penn State University Libraries has announced the relaunch of an expanded Judy Chicago Research Portal, a searchable gateway to the archives of this prominent feminist ...

Two Ebook Bill Hearings; New Digital Collections From South Africa, India, Nepal and Georgia Now Available Online From...

Clarivate Announces Gordon Samson as President, Intellectual Property and Nominates Dr. Saurabh Saha as New Independent Director Here Come the First ChatGPT Plugins (via OpenAI); More via TechCrunch Illinois House ...

Registration Now Open -- May 24-26 Nobel Prize Summit on Misinformation and Trust in Science (In-Person & Virtual)

From the U.S. National Academy of Science: Registration is now open for the Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope — which will convene Nobel Prize laureates and other world-renowned experts and ...

Report: "Top Missouri Lawmaker Moves To Strip Library Funding"

From the Associated Press (AP):  A powerful Missouri state lawmaker on Tuesday moved to strip state funding for public libraries over a fight about books. Republican House Budget Committee Chairman ...

European Research Council (ERC) Study Identifies Repositories That Allow Researchers to Comply With EU Open Science Rules

From the ERC: A new study identifies repositories for data and publications that could help ERC grantees, as well as beneficiaries of other Horizon Europe grants, comply with EU open ...

Nearly 20 Hindawi Journals Delisted From Leading Index Amid Concerns of Papermill Activity & More News Headlines

Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) and Lyrasis Announce Succession Planning Initiative for Collections Stewardship Nearly 20 Hindawi Journals Delisted From Leading Index Amid Concerns of Papermill Activity ...

Houston Chronicle: "As Book Bans Ebb, the Battle to Criminally Charge Texas Librarians Has Started"

From the Houston Chronicle: Politically and socially conservative, Texas is a national leader in school book challenges and bans; a Chronicle investigation last summer counted more than 2,000 content reviews of challenged school library ...

Connecticut: Librarians and Lawmakers Fight Against High Cost of eBooks

From CT Insider: A bill that would end many of the contract restrictions won unanimous approval last week in the legislative Planning and Development Committee, following recent public hearings that brought ...

Research Tools: National Geographic Society and Utrecht University Launch World Water Map

From the National Geographic Society: Today, the National Geographic Society launched the World Water Map as part of its five-year World Freshwater Initiative to better understand developing freshwater shortages around the world ...

Google is Opening Up Access to Its Bard AI Chatbot Today; Don’s Conference Notes- R2R: The 2023 Researcher...

AI Makes Plagiarism Harder to Detect, Argue Academics – in Paper Written by Chatbot (via The Guardian) Bing Image Creator Comes to the New Bing (via Microsoft) Censorship or Evolution? ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.