Tips for Downloading Materials
- Val Waldron
If you are affiliated with a member library and have logged in successfully through your institution, you should be able to download all volumes in the public domain. Please see the help article “What You Can Download from the Collection” for more details about what content can be downloaded, and under which circumstances.
We are unfortunately not able to download a file and send it to you manually. Please use our Book Viewer to read or download materials that are available to you. You can also opt to find other websites that may help you access a copy of the book. To find them, click on “Get This Item” in the left sidebar of the Book Viewer while the book you wish to download is open.
Instructions
If you are affiliated with a member library, here are the steps you can take to log in, go to the book that you would like to access, and download it.
Log in
Start at www.hathitrust.org
Click the Log In button in the upper right corner.
Select your university name under "Find your partner institution" and hit Continue.
Next, you will see the usual login screen for your institution. Enter your username and password and complete the login.
You will automatically get re-routed back to the HathiTrust website, where the Log In button in the header bar will have been replaced with a person icon.
Download an entire book
Go to the book you are trying to access. If you have the right account credentials, the options under "Get this book" in the left sidebar should now include "Selected page scans" and "Whole item."
Click the "Whole item" link to download the entire book. A popup box should appear, informing you that we are building your PDF. A progress bar alerts you to the status of the build process, and once the PDF has been fully created, you can click on "Download" to download the PDF to a location of your choosing.
Download only a portion of a book, such as an article or chapter
If you have the permission to download a book in full, you can also select specific pages within it for download. Click on the arrow next to the page number to expand a drop-down menu. From the menu, you can click on the checkbox to select your pages.
To select a range of pages, select the first page of the range, navigate to the last page of your desired range, and shift+click to select the range.
Once you have finished selecting all of the pages that you would like to include in your download, navigate to the left sidebar to the “Download” heading and under Range, make sure that the radio button for “Selected page scans” is selected. You can also choose your desired format for the download file.
Factors that may affect the download speed
When you click the link to download the whole book, the time it takes to build the file depends on the length of the book. Building the file for a book that has 90 pages will be much faster than a book that has 900 pages. If you don't need the entire book, consider selecting only the range of pages that you need.
When HathiTrust member libraries create digital books, they scan each page in the book as a high resolution image. They also create a separate plain-text file for each page which contains the text in that image. When you request a file download, we custom-build the file based on what you’ve selected. The build operation can include processes to reduce the size of the pages, convert the text to a new format, or repackage the pages. As a result, you may have to wait a few seconds or even minutes while this file is custom-built for you.