Something interesting is happening at the intersection of libraries, books and AI.
HathiTrust has received a *$5 million, five-year grant from the Mellon Foundation* to develop “Transparent Books: AI Infrastructure for Discovery and the Public Interest”.
The aim is quite practical: make its collection of around *19 million digitised volumes* easier for researchers, students and the public to discover and study using AI.
The project will focus on:
• Improving book metadata, summaries, subjects and text quality • Developing better, interactive ways to search and explore books • Providing *lawful and verified* book data for academic and non-commercial AI research • Supporting text mining, computational research and specialised language models • Developing principles around copyright, research integrity, accountability and environmental impact
HathiTrust will work with *Northeastern University Library* and *Authors Alliance* on the project.
What I find particularly interesting is the emphasis on *public-interest AI*. The idea is not simply to put more books into AI systems, but to create a transparent and lawful way for researchers to work with large-scale digital collections.
That distinction matters.
If libraries can provide trusted access to digitised knowledge while respecting authors, copyright and academic values, AI could become a much more useful research tool.
A thoughtful development worth watching.
Source: HathiTrust www.hathitrust.org/press-post/hathitrust-receives-grant-to-deliver-ai-enabled-access-to-digital-books/