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HathiTrust Digital Library at Auburn

This guide explains HathiTrust and its benefits to the Auburn Community

Engineering & Physics Librarian

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Andrew Wohrley
Subjects: Engineering, Physics

Federal Government Documents on HathiTrust

HathiTrust has a wealth of scanned U.S. federal government documents available. Government documents are generally not subject to copyright law, so they have been a focus of the scanning efforts by the various contributing organizations. 

Federal Documents in HathiTrust as of September 1, 2020:

  • 590,822 bibliographic records
  • 1,363,027 digital objects
  • 525,995 monographs
  • 34,651 serial titles

HathiTrust is also creating a comprehensive U.S. Government Documents Registry. When finished, this registry will have bibliographic information about every government document published, whether or not it's present in HathiTrust. 

For more information on government documents available at Auburn, please go to the subject guide Government Information.

Government Documents Search Tips

  • The same item may be cataloged differently on different records. For example, An Old-Growth Definition of Eastern Riverfront Forests, from the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, is on both its own individual record and as no. 7 on the series record for the General Technical Report SRS. 
  • The quality and legibility of the page images can vary widely depending upon the source. If you encounter a tough-to-read item, see if it's available from another library, either on the same catalog record or a different one.  
  • Though almost all U.S. federal government documents are fully viewable by anyone, HathiTrust still requires a login to download documents.

Submitting Feedback

Not all U.S. federal government documents are available for full view on HathiTrust. Some have legitimate copyright issues, but others have been incorrectly cataloged. You can click the feedback button on the document's record (visible below) to suggest the item be opened up for full view. Review of the document will take some time, so it probably won't be opened right away.