The University of Georgia has an abundance of resources available for online students to make for a seamless learning experience and provide support to students off campus. UGA Online has recently acquired a new distance librarian, John Prechtel, who will be available to serve the information needs of distance learning students. Prechtel serves as a library liaison to the faculty and students and helps to provide distance learners with the ability to use library resources as much as possible in the way that on-campus students do. 

In addition to gaining a new distance librarian, the University of Georgia Library has partnered with Google Books, and through this partnership about 120,000 of the Libraries’ 4.5 million volumes will be digitized. This will allow students further access to literary, historical, scientific and reference books and journals through UGA’s library catalog as well as one of the largest digital book collections in the world.

The University of Georgia library is one of 60 major libraries around the world to have partnered with Google Books for Digital access, and UGA is one of the first partners in the region to contribute to the 35 million volume database.

John Prechtel, UGA distance librarian, says, “This project benefits UGA’s distance students because it increases the quantity of books, reports, and other documents available directly online as they pursue their research.” 

UGA Libraries’ contribution to the Google Books database includes items that are not widely available online. The volumes span centuries and cross genres, from the arts to economic forecasts, peanut and cotton research reports and U.S. and United Nations government reports.

The ability to search through the full text of digitized materials on Google Books will make it easier for researchers to gain access to the knowledge that helps them to better understand our world. This also allows for quicker, more streamlined access to information, and students will be able to view more than one source at a time. 

“We’re thrilled about helping to make a large part of the University of Georgia’s rich collection more available to the world, including materials that reflect the history of the American Southeast,” said Google Books partnerships manager Ben Bunnell. “We hope that other great libraries, in the region and elsewhere, will join UGA and Google in this endeavor.”

View the original article on UGA Today.