The Boston Globe’s Most Sought-After Content Goes Digital Through New Expanded Agreement with ProQuest
<i>The Boston Globe</i> content most requested by librarians and researchers will be digitized and made available for the first time through ProQuest, thanks to an expanded agreement between the two companies. The contract extends digitization to the complete run of <i>The Boston Globe</i> – including the paper’s sought-after coverage of civil rights, busing and the Kennedys in the 1960s and ‘70s. Content will become part of ProQuest’s <i>Historical Newspapers</i> collection, <i>Newsstand</i> – which assembles current news – and the full-image, browsable ProQuest Digital Microfilm™. With ProQuest’s new unified platform in the offing for 2010, the content will be cross-searched and integrated with relevant content from a library’s entire ProQuest collection.
“Not only does this expansion capture the complete run of the paper, but it brings the content that researchers highly value from The Boston Globe – its important coverage of the hot-button issues of the 1960s and ‘70s as they unfolded in Boston,” said Rod Gauvin, Senior Vice President, ProQuest. “With each new addition to Historical Newspapers, we’re seeing the promise of this program coming to bear: the strengths of individual newspapers combine to create a resource that connects researchers with the single best source of information for their query… no matter what the topic is.”
The Boston Globe editions published between 1927 and 1980 will join the collection of 28 major newspapers in ProQuest Historical Newspapers – the world’s largest digital newspaper archive. ProQuest will digitize the content from its pristine microfilm collection, enabling researchers to view articles and pages as they originally appeared. Content is supported by sophisticated technology that allows users to easily zero in on anything that appeared in the paper, including ads, cartoons and images of all sorts. In fact, users can read any issue page by page to get a complete picture of the day. The Boston Globe editions published after 1980 will be collected in ProQuest Newsstand. Newsstand provides a similar experience, but is focused on current news in ASCII format. Both products allow cross-searching with the other newspapers available in each collection.
For libraries that have a continuing preference for microfilm, The Boston Globe and ProQuest are also making full-image content available from 2008 forward through ProQuest Digital Microfilm™. This groundbreaking solution allows multiple, simultaneous users to view full-image newspaper microfilm content from any computer with internet access, overcoming the on-site, single-user barriers of traditional microfilm. The Digital Microfilm™ process works by scanning microfilm of selected newspapers from the 2008 volume year and forward, supporting the resulting digital copy online. Content is easily browsed, and supported with metadata that make it easy to skip through virtual reels.
The Boston Globe’s digital content is part of ProQuest's continually expanding support of global research. ProQuest’s news content is among the world’s most extensive troves of primary source information, including more than 800 current newspapers and 400 editorially-vetted blogs from around the world, ProQuest Historical Newspapers™—25 million pages of news dating from 1764—and content from more than 300 U.S. and international broadcast news outlets. With an all-new platform in the works for 2010, the breadth of this content will be integrated and available through a single search, creating a robust new avenue for research.
To learn more about ProQuest’s ability to propel research and discovery, visit proquest.com.
About The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is wholly owned by The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2008 revenues of $2.9 billion, which includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.
About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that provide the most successful ways for people to search, find, use, and share information.
A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as UMI®, Chadwyck-Healey™, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.
More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any level and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others.
The company is nearing launch of an all-new platform that will transform delivery of several highly-regarded individual platforms into a consolidated research experience that will encompass all ProQuest family products over time. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.
For more information, please visit www.proquest.com.