Temporary Access Books
- Val Waldron
“Temporary access” books are made available through the Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS). Your university must be a HathiTrust member, and your library must work with HathiTrust to make this service available to you. Learn more on our Emergency Temporary Access Service page.
Instructions
To read a “temporary access” book, follow these steps:
Log into HathiTrust with your university account.
Search for the book you are interested in reading. You may see the following in your search results:
Books that have the label “Temporary Access” are made available to you temporarily. You can read these books online. Select the “Temporary Access” link to open the book.
Similarly, if you navigate to the detailed record, the access link under the “Viewability” section will say “Temporary access.”
Books that have the label “Full View” are either in the public domain or were opened with permission from the copyright holder. You have regular access to these books, which includes being able to read the entire book online, and if you are logged in and are affiliated with a member institution, you can download the entire book. Select the “Full View” access link to open the book.
Books that have the label “Limited (search-only)” are restricted, and you cannot read or download them, even through the Emergency Temporary Access Service. You can, however, search within the books. You can find out more about the limits of this service on our ETAS: Information for Users page.
Click on the temporary access link. You will see an information bar on the next screen that contains the text, "Access to this work is provided through the Emergency Temporary Access Service." A "Check Out" button will also appear within the information banner.
Click on the “Check Out” button to read the book.
After you check out the book, you will be able to read the book on the HathiTrust website. Downloading is not permitted. The banner at the top of the browser informs you how long the book is checked out to you. Your access to the book will renew automatically, unless another user requests the book after your hour is up.
You may also choose to click on the “Return Early” button if you no longer need the book. This will free up the book to be checked out by another person at your institution.
If you are idle for more than an hour and another user checks out the book in the meantime, your access will expire. You may still be able to access a couple of pages in the book that were pre-loaded, but the book pages will change to a page with the text “access expired” across the center. Reload the page in your browser to find out if the book is available for checkout.
If all available copies are currently in use
When you click on the “Check Out” button, you may see a message like this one indicating that all available copies are currently in use:
Through the Emergency Temporary Access Service, each university or library has access only to the number of digital copies that the library told us they had. If your library holds only one print copy on the shelves, then only one user affiliated with your university can access the digital book in HathiTrust at a time. If you encounter this message, we would recommend attempting to check out the book again later.
You can find out more about using this service on our ETAS: Information for users page.