[pd-discuss] Hathitrust locks public domain books; amasses scans from others, and gives full access only to partners members

Tue Jun 21 16:37:22 UTC 2011

On 21 June 2011 17:16,  <dingodog at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> many PUBLIC DOMAIN books scanned by googlebooks (accessible in
> hathitrust only to PAYING MEMBERS) are not accessible (even if in public
> domain) in googlebooks web interface. This is the point, since
> googlebooks does not care to investigate about public domain status and
> left many PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS in snippet view. I guess this is the MAIN
> attractive for people paying hathitrust to access to books unaccessible
> via googlebooks. I obtained to unlock a public domain books left in
> snippet view erroneosly, but ONE WHOLE YEAR has passed to unlock from
> the part of googlebooks!

This is a problem with Google, not with Hathi, though. Hathi are
treating it the same way as any other public domain book in their
system - pageview to general readers, download to subscribers. The
fact that Google are a bit slow and haven't fixed *their* viewing
system doesn't oblige Hathi Trust to change their access policies to
accomodate it.

>> you can digitize the title yourself and make your digital copy freely available to the world.
> [...]
> you are a wise man and you cannot speak in these terms too simplistic,
> since you know that is not possible for everyone find a certain book and
> scan. Hathitrust is a big anomaly in public domain books world and it
> really exclude tons of public domain books from FULL ACCESS free
> browsing (browsing page by page and in LOW RES is not ENOUGH)

You think it's not enough; other people think it is; it would be a
dull world if we always agreed :-)

That said, "full access" does not always mean "full access in the
specific format I want". The fact that they offer it for some users
and not for others is a little irritating, but it's not illegal, it's
not unethical, it's not improper; it's a reasonable if imperfect
compromise.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk