[rwhaling]

I used to work with HathiTrust and attended a few workshops; my experience was that the notion of a "data capsule" that ensures "non-consumptive use" is quite onerous, in practice, and that getting that access can acquire prior approval and supervision of research activities:

https://wiki.htrc.illinois.edu/display/COM/HTRC+Data+Capsule...

I think it's actually a clever technical solution to a hideous legal problem, and it makes a lot of research possible that would be totally illegal otherwise, but it 100% gets in the way of totally legitimate research as well.

[jccalhoun]

My experience with HathiTrust is that I search for something through my university library's site, I click on a link to something that takes me to Hathi and it says I can't access it. Thanks for nothing HathiTrust. I guess it might be useful for people that want to do some quantitative work but for those of us who want to actually read the works it is just digital blue balls.

[mcguire]

Does it make you feel any better that most of the texts over a decade old are permanently out of print and thus valueless, and that the hideous legal problem only applies to a tiny fraction of the works in question?

[marvindanig]

Not to mention how much of Amazon's rainforest have been/are being razed to ground to make way for pulp farming for the dead trees. It's scary and stupid both.

[ars]

Are you being sarcastic? Amazon rainforest wood is not used for paper, the trees are cut down for farmland, not for the wood.

There are far better sources of wood, but land is more scarce.

[marvindanig]

Who said anything about using old trees for book pulp? Pulp farming requires arable land which is taken away from rainforests.