Library & Archives

The Library and Archives are pleased to announce that Laurentian University is now a member of HathiTrust, “a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.”  While our membership does facilitate full-text online access to several million public domain and Creative Commons books, Laurentian students, faculty and staff now also have temporary online access to about 120,000 in-copyright books, which mirror about a quarter of the titles in Laurentian’s physical book collection.  This new online access to so many of our print books will greatly simplify the use of our collections for as long as physical access to them remains restricted in the context of COVID-19 safety protocols.

Because the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) allows current students, faculty and staff to read online many print books in our collection that are under copyright, we are required to cease the lending, under our curbside pickup or RACER document delivery services, of all in-copyright physical books that are available to us online under the HathiTrust ETAS.  Those wishing to consult a book that is normally only available in print at Laurentian are now asked to check the HathiTrust catalogue first, where they will have immediate online access if the book is available to us in HathiTrust.  Our staff will also check curbside pickup and RACER requests to ensure that a book available under the HathiTrust ETAS is not physically lent. 

 It is possible to access the HathiTrust collection from Laurentian’s catalogue.

Alternatively, to search the HathiTrust catalogue, navigate to the HathiTrust website (you may want to bookmark this page), and choose “Laurentian University” as the “partner institution,” and you will be prompted to log in using your regular Laurentian username and password.  In the HathiTrust catalogue records, items marked “Temporary Access” are those available to us specifically under the ETAS program

To view the item, click “Temporary access” then “Check Out.”

Only one person at a time has access to a given ETAS book, so it may occasionally be necessary to “try again later.”

An update on RACER: Please note that the RACER inter-library loan and document delivery service remains unavailable for requesting books that are not in Laurentian’s library collection.  We hope that this service will resume soon as university libraries across Ontario and beyond may bring staff back onto campus to provide this collaborative service.