In 2011, HathiTrust was sued by the Authors Guild for copyright infringement for digitizing material still under copyright. On October 10, 2012, federal court Judge Harold Baer sided with HathiTrust, citing the service’s “contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of the arts” and support for accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In summer 2014, Judge Baer's ruling was upheld in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
HathiTrust (pronounced 'hah-tee') is a partnership of libraries and research institutions that have come together to build and share a digital repository of print works. Begun in 2008, the goal of the partnership is to both preserve and provide access to print works. HathiTrust has pursued this goal chiefly by digitizing materials like books and journals from library collections and making them available in HathiTrust Digital Library.
FSU students and employees have full-text access and downloading capabilities for those items in the public domain.
To access all the content and services available to FSU users you must first log in by following these steps:
This guide was originally published in 2012. Minor revisions and updates by Adam Beauchamp in 2021.
Except where otherwise noted, the content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Florida State University Libraries | 116 Honors Way | Tallahassee, FL 32306 | (850) 644-2706