New emergency digital resources rolled out at libraries
January 20, 2021
King’s Library, along with Brescia, Huron, and Western Libraries, has joined the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (HathiTrust ETAS). Our community now has digital access to more than 760,000 print volumes in the collections as a temporary solution for those who need library resources while working and studying remotely. This comes at a time when access to print collections is disrupted or limited for students, faculty, and staff due to COVID-19 restrictions on travel and access to physical campuses.
HathiTrust is a global collaborative of more than two hundred research and academic libraries working towards its mission to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future.
“King's and Western Libraries continue to share a friendly and productive partnership in support of our larger educational community. As members of the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Program, King's, with Western Libraries, will be able to extend the reach of our collection by providing up to 30% of our books online to users at home. With so many of our community working remotely due to COVID-19, this is a great opportunity to make our resources available from a distance,” says Adrienne Co-Dyre, Director of Libraries, Cardinal Carter Library.
In compliance with copyright law, books available through HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access System are digital read-only and therefore the print version will not be available through library no-contact pick-up service at this time. The emergency service will continue to the end of the winter term. King’s Library, along with Brescia, Huron, and Western Libraries, will reassess the provision of HathiTrust ETAS for future school terms should the pandemic continue to limit university on-site access. They will seek feedback from users to assist with this determination.
When searching through the library catalogue, if a text is available through HathiTrust ETAS, the record will display a link to access the digitized volume via the temporary service.
To learn more about using the HathiTrust ETAs at King’s and Western Libraries, please visit https://www.lib.uwo.ca/hathitrustetas/index.html. Over the last twelve years, members have contributed more than 17.4 million volumes to the digital library, digitized from their library collections through a number of means including Google and Internet Archive digitization and in-house initiatives. More than 6.5 million of the contributed volumes are in the U.S. public domain and freely available online.
Photo by Elizabeth Reitzel, Year 2, Honours Specialization in English