Many things on Hathi Trust were actually digitized for Google Books. Under “About this Item” on the left side of the screen, you’ll see something like this:
Here’s the Google Books page. The PDF download link is hidden behind the gear menu:
Interesting. Reminds me of DW’s work on the Golding volumes.
Unfortunately, that kind of “derivative work” of the original will come under copyright when it’s restored. So the restored edition isn’t in the public domain, though the original is.
@thenewreligion thanks again for fruitful searching!
I’ve updated the post at the top of this topic, now also converting the old table into a list, to make room for more notes.
Two upshots.
First, these look like especially good Haverhill scanning app candidates:
- The USMC Goodyear Welt Shoes pamphlet
- Technology of Boot & Shoe Manufacture
Second, I am personally very interested in these ones you called out, but they’re both in WorldCat with lots of copies available:
- The Manufacture of Shoe Uppers (239 pages!)
- Bolton’s The Manual for Upper Leather Cutters (248 pages!)
I’m going through the list up top and making lists of the libraries that have some of these books. Some may have their own digitization programs, or partnerships with Internet Archive. Some may also just be nearby to people on the forum.
It sounds like a neat project I’d love to hunt it down for personal use. far as I can tell that version has disappeared. Only google books even has that isbn registered, not in LOC. According to the commenter on Amazon, the one available as a reprint or on kindle is not the remastered version. Might be a ghost.
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Oh neat trick thanks
Just sent the next batch of titles to Becky. I’ve updated the list above with “Requested” to mark them. Footwear Designer and a few others in WorldCat but not scanned were included, @thenewreligion.
Hero Librarian Becky got back to me 2025-05-23T07:00:00Z to say she got my latest list of proposed titles to scan, but probably won’t get to them before the holiday weekend. I replied real quick with thanks.
Becky got back me to today, confirming that she has submitted an application for scanning with several of the titles we brought up! Tons of great stuff coming, though the application has yet to be approved.
Already Available
Becky was able to find The Manufacture of Shoe Uppers on Google Books already. This is a big one!
Not Included
The American Footwear Designer is not on the application, since a revised edition by much later-coming author is on Google Books, but without any full download. The original should be in the public domain, but isn’t available anywhere online that I have found.
The Footwear of Soldiers was also excluded. It’s on Google Books, but with only snippets made public. Betsy seems top think this means that the the copyright holder has set the level of access. I wonder about that, since it’s been in the public domain a good number of years and USMC was gone long before Google Books started scanning.
Goodyear Welt Shoes: How They Are Made has apparently been digitized by a group called Hagley Digital Archives, here. But their site is currently down with a notice that they were being thrashed by bot scraping for data to train “AI” on. I’ve set myself a reminder to check the link again in a month or so.
Crispin Anecdotes may or may not go on a future application. Gale apparently has a scan, but it’s only available with paid access.
Included in App, To Scan
- A Manual of Boot & Shoe Manufacture
- Technology of Boot & Shoe Manufacture, which Becky reports looks to be an updated edition of A Manual of boot & shoe manufacture
- The Manual for Upper Leather Cutters
- Upper Closing Illustrated
- Swaysland’s report on American manufacture
- Lynn Independent Industrial Shoemaking School
- United Shoe Machinery Corporation : The Story of its Service and Methods
- The Secret of the Shoe
- Modern Shoemaking
Ah thats too bad. The linked google book for footwear designer is not a revised edition, just an open domain book behind a paywall because there is not an open access version available. Kessler is the original author (well
, kessler was the illustrator and nevin meck the writer back in 1918). I even bought a copy of this book from them and they specifically omit the original copyright pages and dont list any copyright of their own. I don’t think “Kormendi press” have a rights to that book anymore than Frommer did on Golding.
@thenewreligion you’d pointed to some info online that I took to mean a new author had done some retouch work and republished in the 2010s. Let me see if I can find it:
This title on Amazon is not the original, nor is the book properly credited. The origianal and correct title is “The American Footwear Designer” for this book written by E. Nevin Meck, with shoe pattern drawings by Louis Kessler published in 1923. This book was brought to the attention of fashion historians and cowboy boot makers by LD Cresson in 2007, ISBN-13: 9780979665127. She copyrighted her retouched pages with the Library of Congress and was the first to researched and registered her reprints with books in print, assigning her own ISBNs. You should try to find a copy from Ms. Cresson, as she has retouched each and every page, and made usable, the template for curves found in footwear lasts, has photo-retouched other graphics including the footwear patterns and other initially crude half-tones.
[…]
From Amazon review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1447427505/R2IDO7VEBU80NQ
Google Books actually has two entries for it, both listing 2011 as original copyright year. There’s preview pages of one of them. What I see is definitely a ePUB digital conversion. It’s got the kind of generic cover page graphic that mass on-demand reprint hawkers do:
I strongly suspect the holdup here is just confusion, due to the way the reprint was mishandled. Unfortunately, even that may be enough to hold this book up for scanning, first with Becky and just as possibly later, with whoever reviews the applications for scanning at the state program.
I would love to find that version somewhere with the retouched illustrations but I’ve yet to come across it in the wild. It may have been a small project and be lost to time. That isbn doesn’t show up on LOC lookup
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The Hagley Trust set up a bot-blocker, so it’s possible to download their books again, including the USMC Goodyear Welt Shoes pamphlet: https://digital.hagley.org/08079107_goodyear_welt_shoes
Today is a banner day for craft shoemaking! Hero Librarian Becky of Haverhill just let me know that the latest crop of their shoe books have been scanned and put up on Internet Archive.
I have just donated $100 to Haverhill Public Library through PayPal, using the button on their donation page at haverhillpl.org/donate/. If you’ve ever paid more than a hundred bucks for a shoe book—shipping included!—I strongly recommend you consider donating, as well.
Behold this towering trove, snatched from the all-consuming maw of obscurity:
I’ve created or updated wiki entries for each of these, as well, so they now appear with public domain marks and downloadable icons on the books index.
I’m having trouble deciding which to read first!
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What did you think of thelastest haul? I thought Hill and Yeoman was a neat read from an historical perspective .
I’m not even close to through it all yet!