UA Libraries Publishes First E-Book

The University of Arizona Libraries has published "Latino Politics: A Growing and Evolving Political Community," which was co-authored by a UA political science professor.

The University of Arizona Libraries has published its first electronic book.

The e-book, "Latino Politics: A Growing and Evolving Political Community," is a new reference book hosted on the library's institutional repository site, or the UAiR, a database of scholarly work. 

"Latino Politics" was produced jointly by UA political science professor John A. Garcia, J. Salvador Peralta, a University of West Georgia assistant professor, and Gabriel R. Sanchez, a University of New Mexico assistant professor.

The digital 316-page book is intended as a resource guide for researchers studying the Hispanic community. It provides an annotated bibliography of books and articles from 1990 to 2008 that focus on Hispanics and also includes a retrospective essay by the authors that provides context for the project.

According to the authors, the recent growth of the Hispanic population presents unique challenges to the nation's capacity to successfully accommodate the needs and interests of Hispanics in education, health care and business.

"Latino Politics" provides scholars with an expanded list of resources that reaches beyond the typically sought-after canon.

"There is a market out there for a book on these resources and not just a market in the U.S.," said Garcia, who has attended conferences in Europe and Canada where he became aware that many scholars outside the country are studying Latino issues in the U.S.

The book grew out of work Garcia did as part of the Latino National Survey in 2003. At that time, Peralta and Sanchez were both serving as Garcia's research assistants.

The team spent more than one yeaer working to identify research articles and books that may have been overlooked by mainstream researchers. They also contacted several presses, which suggested publishing it as an e-book through the UA Libraries' institutional repository.

Garcia said he is pleased with the results.

Print journals and books can have a smaller, target readership, but for a book like "Latino Politics," which can be used interdisciplinarily, publishing as an e-book makes sense, he said.

"It's really great if you look at it from primarily a sense of audience," Garcia said. "You can target a much larger audience because of the way people browse on the Internet."