We can officially celebrate the completion of the Benson component of our partnership in the Google Books project. This from our colleagues at Google recently:
Since we launched our partnership with the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, we have been working hard to make their unique Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection accessible to readers online. The collection is one of the largest Latin American collections in the world, and is renowned for the scope and breadth of its materials covering Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean island nations, South America, and the Latino presence in the United States.
Today, we are proud to announce the completion of our digitization project with the University of Texas Libraries and the inclusion of over 500,000 unique volumes into the Google Books index.
Finished years ahead of schedule and at virtually no cost to the Libraries, we can look back on our involvement with a great sense of accomplishment witnessed by the successful digital preservation and disclosure of half a million items from the remarkable collection of the Benson Latin American Collection.
It remains to be seen how Google Book Search evolves as the legal process winds to conclusion, but we can close our chapter knowing that this vital collection of record is more discoverable and better accessible to scholars and students around the globe.