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

Tue Jun 21 18:14:53 UTC 2011

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:45 +0100, "Rufus Pollock"
<rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
> It is costly to digitize stuff
> including public domain material. I would of course prefer all
> digitized public domain material to be made openly available but I
> understand people operate under constraints, and that HathiTrust in
> particular is likely doing its best to both sustain their digitization
> programme and make material available :-)
[...]
but... as far I know, hathitrust only ask *paying* for space and *full*
access to public domain books, and scans nothing by itself. Maybe asking
a certain (someone said high) fee to join and have access, is a kind of
system to make money without to be identified as institution *making
money with books*?, and to have good press? In fact in blogs and
journals very few speak of these problems, the majority accepts
uncritically the panegyrics of hathitrust
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