Today, Google welcomes its latest library partner - the University of Texas at Austin - to the Google Books Library Project. Known as the fifth largest academic library in the United States, the University of Texas Libraries house some of the nation's leading collections, including the world-renowned Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Soon, researchers and history lovers all over the world will be able to search more than one million books and materials from the University of Texas, including selections from these unique works from early Latin American history.
Initially endowed with a unique set of rare books and manuscripts relating to Mexico, the Benson Collection now maintains a wealth of information from Latin America, with special concentrations on Brazil, Chile, Peru, and the countries of the Rio de la Plata and Central America. The Benson Collection chronicles the rich history, politics and society of the region and includes the works of notable Latin American authors.
"Intellectual discovery is at the heart of the scholarly research process," said Fred Heath, vice provost and director of libraries at the University of Texas. "The best collections of information are only as useful as the quality of the tools available for discovering and accessing that information. Joining with Google's Book Search program will mean that the intellectual content of our collections are discoverable by a much wider range of scholars and students."
Working together, Google and the University of Texas will digitize over a million books from the university's collection. Anyone will be able to freely view, browse, and read the university's public domain documents. For books protected by copyright, users will be able to see basic background (such as the book's title and the author's name), at most a few lines of text related to their search, and information about where they can buy or borrow a book....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
