In my experience, the actual reason is probably not copyright, as was suggested. The ILL software likely has a few canned responses, and “this is too big, we don’t want to scan it” likely rounds to the reason received. I’ve also had a librarian refuse to scan a relatively short document for “copyright” reasons, despite the document being in the public domain, though not obviously so.
It’s worth asking if they’ll scan it again, but I’m fairly confident they would continue to refuse to scan it even if there were no copyright issues. My recommendation might be asking someone else to scan the entire dissertation on their own. The catalog record indicates the dissertation has 61 pages, which is totally doable.
Incidentally, HathiTrust has it, but it’s not available for download. In addition to Harvard, Cornell has a copy as well. Might be worth asking someone at Cornell if Harvard is a dead end.
In my experience, the actual reason is probably not copyright, as was suggested. The ILL software likely has a few canned responses, and “this is too big, we don’t want to scan it” likely rounds to the reason received. I’ve also had a librarian refuse to scan a relatively short document for “copyright” reasons, despite the document being in the public domain, though not obviously so.
I hope that’s the explanation and a little pushback will motivate them into scanning it.
It’s worth asking if they’ll scan it again, but I’m fairly confident they would continue to refuse to scan it even if there were no copyright issues. My recommendation might be asking someone else to scan the entire dissertation on their own. The catalog record indicates the dissertation has 61 pages, which is totally doable.
Incidentally, HathiTrust has it, but it’s not available for download. In addition to Harvard, Cornell has a copy as well. Might be worth asking someone at Cornell if Harvard is a dead end.