Texas Joins Google Books Library Project

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2007/january2007/utexas.cfm

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Posted January 26, 2007.

Texas Joins Google Books Library Project

The University of Texas at Austin is the 11th library to partner with Google in its project to digitize books and provide access to their contents through its search engine. In a January 19 announcement, university officials said the contract with Google was for six years and would involve at least one million volumes chosen by library staff.

“Google pays for the cost of picking up the books, digitizing the books, putting them in the Google Books website, and returning the books,” UT Libraries spokesman Doug Barnett said in the January 20 Austin American-Statesman. “UT is responsible for selecting the books and bringing them to a central collection point for Google, so the costs associated with that process would be absorbed by the libraries.”

“Intellectual discovery is at the heart of the scholarly research process,” said Associate Director for Research Services Dennis Dillon. “The best collections of information are only as useful as the quality of the tools available for discovering and accessing that information.”

Google representatives were especially pleased to be able to offer access to UT’s Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, which contains some 950,000 items.

Posted January 26, 2007.