If your *institutional* email address is not on their whitelist (not sure
if it is limited to subscribing ones, they don't say) you cannot register
using the signup form, instead you can only request an account by briefly
explaining why you want one. Weird, because they'd have potentially learned
more about me if they just let me put my gmail address in the signup form.

I don't get it - can all users download public domain content? If they give
me an account, will I be indistinguishable from a subscribing institution?
If not, why the extra hoops?

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:51 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On May 27, 2015, at 6:33 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >> In my copious spare time I have hacked together a thing I’m calling the
> HathiTrust Research Center Workset Browser, a (fledgling) tool for doing
> “distant reading” against corpora from the HathiTrust. [0, 1] ...
> >>
> >> 'Want to give it a try? For a limited period of time, go to the
> HathiTrust Research Center Portal, create (refine or identify) a collection
> of personal interest, use the Algorithms tool to export the collection's
> rsync file, and send the file to me. I will feed the rsync file to the
> Browser, and then send you the URL pointing to the results.
> >>
> >> [0] introduction in a blog posting - http://ntrda.me/1FUGP2g
> >> [1] HTRC Workset Browser - http://bit.ly/workset-browser
> >
> > Eric, what happens if you access this from a non-HT institution? When I
> go to HT I am often unable to download public domain titles because they
> aren't available to members of the general public.
>
>
> The short answer is, “Nothing”.
>
> The long answer is… longer. The HathiTrust proper is accessible to
> anybody, but the downloading of public domain content is only available to
> subscribing institutions.
>
> On the other hand, the “Workset Browser” is designed to work off the
> HathiTrust Research Center Portal, not the HathiTrust proper. The Portal is
> located at http://sharc.hathitrust.org From there anybody can search the
> collection of public domain content, create collections, and apply various
> algorithms against collections. One of the algorithms is “create RSYNC
> file” which, in turn, allows you to download bunches o’ metadata describing
> the items in your collection. (There is also a “download as MARC”
> algorithm.) This rsync file is the root of the Workset Browser. Feed the
> Browser a rsync file, and the Browser will mirror content locally, index
> it, and generate reports describing the collection.
>
> Thank you for asking. Many people do not know there is a HathiTrust
> Research Center.
>
> —
> Eric Morgan
>