How to Find, Research, and Download Old Asbestos Documents: The Hathi Digital Trust is the Place to Be.

For those of you who like to collect old documents or do your own research, especially for asbestos related issues, the Hathi Digital Trust is a great place to start. Never heard of the Hathi Digital Trust? You are leaving behind 18 million documents scanned into electronic format by Google. A good discussion is found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HathiTrust. You can find the trust and its documents at https://www.hathitrust.org/sites/www.hathitrust.org/files/FINAL%20Info%20Sheet_%20Student.pdf.

One thing to know — you need to be affiliated with a member university to get full access. Affiliated includes being an alumni. As an example, I have access codes both through the University of Michigan (which I graduated in 1979) and Cornell University (which I graduated in 1983). You can get a user name and password real easy from your school if it has access and, from my experience, most major universities have access.

Let me give you a few examples. Say that your house was built in 1915 and you want to know what components might contain asbestos. Presto, click on this link for the file which I downloaded from the Hathi Digital trust on that issue: https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1915-Johns-Manville-Building-Material.pdf. How about a Johns Manville publication from 1937 on the history of heat and heat protection? https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1937-Johns-Manville-Heat.pdf.

This is one of my favorites for tracking down what had asbestos. It is a John’s Manville data sheet for its products from 1931. https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1931-Johns-Manville-Product-Data-Sheets.pdf.

My point is that the information is out there and available if you need it. History has a hard time hiding forever.

Thanks and let me know if you have any questions or comments. TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Marty