Increasing Global Discovery of Latin American University Press Books: A Case Study in Collaboration

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While groundbreaking humanities and social sciences (h/ss) research is published daily by hundreds of university presses across Latin America, it hasn't been easily available to libraries digitally. In 2020—at the height of the pandemic—Project MUSE, a division of Johns Hopkins University Press, saw usage for the nearly 1,000 Spanish language books on its platform double, revealing an unmet, worldwide demand for this content. To respond to the market need for current digital Spanish language books, in 2023 MUSE announced a new initiative to greatly expand Spanish language books on its platform to elevate the global visibility of this scholarship via strategic partnerships.Project MUSE collaborated with the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) to more deeply understand library needs and with the Association of University Presses of Latin America and the Caribbean (EULAC) to establish relationships with dozens of Latin American university presses, many of whom never had their books available for institutional purchase. To support as many publishers as possible, MUSE partnered with two major distribution partners in Latin America--Hipertexto-Netizen and Siglo--to facilitate easy and efficient ingestion of book content onto MUSE and ensure robust metadata for maximum discoverability. The results of these strategic collaborations have allowed MUSE to grow the number of Spanish language books on the platform from 1,000 to over 5,000 in less than two years, including for-sale and open access books.This panel discussion will explore the successes and challenges of using a networked approach to bring a critical mass of new and backlist books to the MUSE platform, making them available to library purchasers worldwide, so they can be discovered by audiences that might have been previously out of reach via existing distribution channels. We will talk about best practices for finding and fostering partnerships, sales strategies, library budgets, usage data, and ensuring a sustainable future for Latin American university press digital books.