[Taxacom] The Hathi Trust

Tue Feb 26 07:11:02 CST 2019

Two books I wanted to consult several years ago (one biodiversity related, the other family history related) which were in the Hathi Trust catalog I couldn't gain access to due to the odd restrictions at Hathi Trust. Here is a sample of the exchange (with names removed) I had about the two items (separated by dotted lines). If you think something you need is only available via Hathi Trust but cannot gain access to it I would recommend first checking archive.org, BHL, Google Books, etc. As someone suggested, even an interlibrary loan could be faster!

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I am unable to download a book that should be in the public domain which appears in your catalog: "The Indian Museum, 1814-1914", published by the Trustees of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and printed at the Baptist Mission Press, 1914.

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001378416

I cannot understand why access to a PDF of a work such as this (which should be in the public domain) is restricted to a privileged few! I am attaching a paper of mine that should establish my credentials as a researcher in (among others) the history of biodiversity exploration in South Asia.

I would appreciate it very much if you could enable me to download this book. The purpose of digitizing out-of-copyrighr publications is to make the intellectual work of past generations more easily accessible to the present and future generations. To put restrictions seems to me to defeat that goal.

[Note: Book now available: https://archive.org/details/b21687948/page/n10

----------------------------

Thank you for the additional information about the death date. Working from when Mr. Ewing died, I'm afraid this work will be in copyright outside the United States for 9 more years (works being in copyright for 70 years after the author(s) died is a common term). We will need to keep it closed for worldwide viewing until that time, and I imagine that Google will keep the restrictions until at least that time. It may be worth looking into a inter-library loan or a document delivery service like MITS at the University of Michigan (http://www.lib.umich.edu/mits) or InfoNow at the University of Minnesota (http://www.lib.umn.edu/infonow/services-docdel). I'm sorry we won't be able to be of more help for this volume.

XXXX

Dear XXXX,
I am forwarding this message to you from the BMS World Mission about the year of death of John A. Ewing, author of "Lanka: The Resplendent Isle: The Story of the Baptist Mission in Ceylon" (1912 or 1913, Baptist Missionary Society, London). As you can see, he died in 1951, i.e. 61 years ago. I think no reasonable person will expect the individuals who took the photographs in that book to be still alive. For example, we know that some of the photos came from books by Henry William Cave but Cave's years are 1853-1913! The vast majority of people BORN in the year Ewing's book was published are dead, so to expect it's author or photographers to be still alive is (to put it mildly) being unduly optimistic or assuming Biblical (Old Testament) longevity!

Please, can you see if Google at least make the PDF version of the book (and others like it) available to individual researchers on a case-by-case basis?
Thank you for your interest and help.

[Note: Book now available: https://books.google.com/books/about/Lanka_the_Resplendent_Isle.html?id=eGEaAAAAMAAJ
---------------------------------

Priyantha
D. P. Wijesinghe
dpwijesinghe at yahoo.com 

    On Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 6:43:25 AM EST, Johnson, Paul <Paul.Johnson at sdstate.edu> wrote:  

 Have checked with the pertinent librarian on campus. Access to Hathi Trust holdings apparently requires an institutional membership/subscription for access for most of their holdings.  However, if you can view individual pages of a document then you can screen print or copy that page; not ideal, but is useful for critical information.

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Paul Kirk <p.kirk at kew.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2019 1:23 AM
To: Boyce, Peter; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Hathi Trust

No ... not alone.

Solution: get a proxy server for your browser and pretend to be in the US of A ;-)

Cheers,

Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Boyce, Peter
Sent: 26 February 2019 07:21
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] The Hathi Trust

Dear All,

*slightly* tongue-in-cheek posting: Am I alone if finding The Hathi Trust THE most inaccessible literature resource on the web?

https://babel.hathitrust.org/

Comments (especially as to where I might be able to get access...) much appreciated!

Peter
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