ProQuest Digitizes 150 Years of Historic Newspapers

Complex Conversion Effort Puts Historically Significant Archive at Fingertips of Students and Researchers

Challenge

When ProQuest acquired the rights to the microfilm archives of two of America's most prestigious newspapers – The Washington Post and The New York Times – they knew they were sitting on a potential goldmine.

But extracting that gold – a century and a-half of news articles, editorials and photos capturing the history of the United States – would not be easy. All told, the two archives combined for nearly 5.6 million newspaper pages, more than one million articles and over 100,000 individual newspaper editions. Moreover, newspapers are complex digitization projects, given the large page format, page jumps and multiple photos and graphics.

ProQuest also needed to convert the archives into a format that could be preserved indefinitely in order to maximize its potential for reuse and repurposing. If the digitization was not cost effective, or efficient, ProQuest would find itself in a position where it would be difficult to obtain an adequate return on its investment...