by Playfuls Staff |
21st January 2007
The University of Texas at Austin has become the newest
partner in a broad book digitization project with Google.The partnership
between the University of Texas Libraries and Google is part of the Google
Books [more] Library Project, a project started in December 2004, initially to
digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard
University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public
Library.
In the course of the multi-year project, Google will digitize
at least one million volumes from the University of Texas
Libraries’ collections, working from selection
lists prepared by the Libraries.
“We are excited to join the Google Books digitization
effort, and feel it advances the mission of The University of Texas at Austin,” said William Powers Jr., president of The
University of Texas at Austin.
“Creating digital access to our library collections will enable a great many
more scholars and members of the public to locate and use these tremendously
valuable materials.”
The digitized books will all be fully searchable through
Google Book Search. Google pays particular attention to copyright law and has
specifically designed Book Search to comply with it. Anyone will be able to
freely view, browse and read the university’s public domain books, including a
number of unique treasures in the Libraries’ historic collections.
For books protected by copyright, users will only be
provided the basic background information (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 borrow or buy the book. Publishers or authors
who wish not to have their books digitized can be omitted from inclusion in the
project.
For works in both categories, the digitization project
offers important advantages in visibility of books for potential users and
assists in long-term preservation of the information carried within their
covers.
“University libraries in our society are entrusted with the
critical mission of collecting and providing access to information spanning the
entire range of human knowledge,” said Fred Heath, vice provost and director of
libraries at the university. “Our libraries are also responsible for
effectively preserving this knowledge and ensuring access to it over vast
periods of time. At The University of Texas at Austin, we hold a deep commitment to each of
these objectives and believe that participating in this venture will help
ensure our ability to meet those commitments far into the future.”
According to Dennis Dillon, associate director for research
services for the Libraries, the digitization project will increase the
effectiveness of the Libraries’ collections.
“Intellectual discovery is at the heart of the scholarly
research process,” he said. “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.”
