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Course & Subject Guides

Ebooks @ Pitt

This guide describes the many ebook resources available through the University Library System and how to access them.

HathiTrust

"HathiTrust is an international partnership of academic and research institutions dedicated to ensuring the preservation and accessibility of the vast record of human knowledge. The partnership owns and operates a digital repository containing millions of public domain and in copyright volumes, digitized from partnering institution libraries and other sources. The preserved volumes are made available in accordance with copyright law as a shared scholarly resource for students, faculty, and researchers at the partnering institutions, and as a public good to the world community." - from HathiTrust website

The University Library System (ULS) is continuing as a HathiTrust partner, and has configured the institutional authentication necessary to allow special services for affiliates of HathiTrust partners. Currently those are:

  • Full-PDF download for public domain (out of copyright) works.
  • All of the full-text of books (in copyright and out-of-copyright works) are searchable.
  • Access to the My Collections tool, which makes it possible for users to aggregate works into permanent collections either for private use or to share publicly with others. (follow login directions below)
  • Data Mining and Text Analysis possibilities over the entire HathiTrust collections (in copyright and out-of-copyright works) for university faculty, graduate students, and researchers from the HathiTrust Research Center.

HathiTrust has 6,821,251 volumes(~39% of total) in the public domain in the public domain out of 17,451,224 total volumes. (January 2021)

The ULS is an institutional partner and all of the public domain Ebooks are downloadable as a PDF. All of the books are full-text searchable.

Directions to download the full PDF in HathiTrust.

  1. From the HathiTrust homepage, click on the yellow login.
  2. Select University of Pittsburgh and click continue.
  3. Enter your Pitt username and password and click Login.
  4. Now you will be authenticated as a Pitt user.
  5. Search. Click 'Download whole book (PDF)' (if available) and the PDF will be created for you (this could take a moment).

For further assistance with compatibility and downloading with HathiTrust, see the tab on Pitt's Ebook Collections on the Compatibility with E-Readers and Devices page. 

If you need additional support, Ask Us.