As McMaster University Library plans to reopen Mills Memorial Library and H.G. Thode Library of Science and Engineering on Sept. 7, 2021, the return to pre-pandemic access to the book collections comes with an important change.

Since May 2020, McMaster students, faculty and staff have been using HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service, commonly known as HathiTrust ETAS, to digitally access more than 830,000 print titles in McMaster University Library’s collection. The arrangement, which respects Canadian copyright law, has been made possible by the library’s membership in HathiTrust.

HathiTrust is known as being a particularly rich source of content related to humanities and social sciences.

When Mills and Thode libraries reopen, along with direct access to their book collections, for the fall term, the conditions for the fair use of digital copies of these materials end and so does the access to HathiTrust ETAS.

McMaster’s access to the HathiTrust ETAS service will be deactivated as of Sept. 3, 2021.

For more details and frequently asked questions around this change, please visit the University Library website. 

For questions about accessing materials at McMaster University Library that were temporarily available on HathiTrust ETAS, please email library@mcmaster.ca.