The books that you are unable to renew—and that must be returned to the libraries as soon as possible—may represent the 17 percent of our collections that we are sharing through an Emergency Temporary Access Service program of the HathiTrust. The program allows us to offer electronic versions of titles that are: (1) in copyright, (2) held in physical copies in our libraries, and (3) available as e-texts through HathiTrust. The physical copies must be on our shelves to comply with HathiTrust guidelines, which are in place at most major research libraries.
While we understand that these guidelines present challenges, the goal is to make our collections more accessible during the pandemic. We are relying on the e-versions of the texts in question, which would not be available to us under normal circumstances due to copyright, to provide access to students and faculty who are working remotely. This is a temporary situation that we hope will extend only through this semester.
The books affected by this service are available to use in the libraries. We also have purchased e-versions of as many of these books as possible to alleviate the challenge of the one-hour, renewable Hathi system. In addition, we have introduced a “Scan & Deliver” service to send PDFs of chapters or articles when possible.
Thank you for your patience as we work to deliver content to readers regardless of their location. If you have a question about a particular title, please contact your subject librarian.