  We present a study of HI-rich galaxies in the local universe selected from
blind emission-line surveys. These galaxies represent the emission-line
counterparts of local damped Lyman-alpha systems. We find that the HI
cross-section of galaxies is drawn from a large range of galaxy masses below
M_star, 66% of the area comes from galaxies in the range 8.5 < Log M_star <
9.7. Both because of the low mass galaxy contribution, and because of the range
of galaxy types and luminosities at any given HI mass, the galaxies
contributing to the HI cross-section are not exclusively L_star spirals, as is
often expected. The optical and near infrared counterparts of these galaxies
cover a range of types (from spirals to irregulars), luminosities (from L_star
to <0.01 L_star), and surface brightnesses. The range of optical and near
infrared properties as well as the kinematics for this population are
consistent with the properties for the low-z damped Lyman-alpha absorbers. We
also show that the number of HI-rich galaxies in the local universe does not
preclude evolution of the low-z damped absorber population, but it is
consistent with no evolution.
