Hathi (/ˈhɑːti/), derived from the Sanskrit hastin, is the Hindi word for 'elephant', an animal famed for its long-term memory.

[5] As of 2024, members include more than 219 research libraries[6] across the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is based on a shared governance structure.

[12] A federal court ruled against the Authors Guild in October 2012, finding that HathiTrust's use of books scanned by Google was fair use under US law.

That decision was largely affirmed by the Second Circuit on June 10, 2014, which found that providing search and accessibility for the visually impaired were grounds to consider the service transformative and fair use, and remanded to the lower court to reconsider whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue regarding HathiTrust's library preservation copies.

HathiTrust provides a number of discovery and access services, notably, full-text search across the entire repository.