29 January 2015 News Releases

ProQuest Moves 12 Million Pages of History From Archive Box to Search Box in 2014

In 2014, ProQuest digitized approximately 12 million pages of historical documents, moving them from archive box to search box. The company’s expert digitization and curation of vast and varied information is supported with advanced technologies.

ANN ARBOR, MI, January 29, 2015 – ProQuest continues to lead worldwide digitization of content that improves research outcomes. In 2014, the company digitized approximately 12 million pages of historical documents, moving them from archive box to search box. The company’s expert digitization and curation of vast and varied information is supported with advanced technologies. Now, these rare, previously inaccessible and unconnected documents can be discovered, explored and used by researchers in new and meaningful ways.

Via collaborations with libraries, museums and other non-profits, ProQuest digitized content as diverse as French books printed before 1500, declassified documents predating and surrounding the Snowden leaks, and academic video collections. In total, it’s the equivalent of a physical stack of documents reaching 5,000 feet -- four times the height of the Empire State Building. Highlights include:

  • Digital firsts such as…
    • Unit magazines from the trenches of WWI
    • Complete trove of US Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations
    • Thomas Edison’s diaries, lab journals and letters
    • Archives of the South China Morning Post
    • Records of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
    • Archives of the Congress for Racial Equality
    • Editions of Atlanta Constitution during the Civil Rights Era
    • Open access to full text transcriptions of 25,000 English-language books printed between 1473 and 1699
  • Collaborations with…
    • Bibliothèque nationale de France
    • The British Library
    • Chicago History Museum
    • Hatfield House
    • Imperial War Museum
    • Library of Congress
    • Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
    • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
    • National Archives
    • National Security Archive
    • Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
    • Text Creation Partnership, University of Michigan and Bodleian Libraries
    • Thomas A. Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University
    • The family of civil rights leader Robert F. Williams
    • Wisconsin Historical Society
  • Advances in dissertation discovery
    • More than 30,000 dissertations and theses digitized
    • 3,000 dissertations available as open access via PQDT Open
    • 76 digital repositories created at 72 universities in 10 countries
  • Audio/Video digitization and discovery
    • More than 500 hours of audio/visual files were fully integrated and made discoverable as e-content at libraries around the world

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.

The company’s cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, EBL® and Serials Solutions® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the RefWorks® Flow™ collaboration platform, the Pivot™ research development tool and the Intota™ library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

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