UMI to Create World's Largest Digital Archive of Written Works

Posted on June 30, 1998

UMI, a Bell & Howell Company, announced at the American Library Association Annual Conference its plan to create the world's largest digital collection of printed works when it unlocks the doors to 500 years of information by scanning the contents of its vast microform collection. That collection contains hundreds of thousands of books, newspapers, periodicals and other materials stored in three temperature-controlled vaults at the company's headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich. UMI is calling this massive conversion from microform to electronic format the Digital Vault Initiative.

Through the Digital Vault Initiative, library patrons will be able to log on to ProQuest Direct, UMI's online service, and search the company's entire collection -- from 15th-century literature to 19th-century newspapers to the current week's business publications. Scanning of the 5.5 billion page images began in May and will continue over the course of several years.

"Our goal is to become more than just purveyors of information," said Joseph Reynolds, president and CEO of UMI. "The Digital Vault Initiative will allow UMI to take the content of our enormous vault of information and place it directly into the context of an individual's research or studies via ProQuest Direct."

The first phase of the Digital Vault Initiative will focus on UMI's collection of early English literature, including nearly every English-language book published from the invention of printing in 1475 to 1700. This collection, begun in 1938 as UMI's first microfilm project, includes such works as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Culpeper's The English Physician and Shakespeare's renowned First Folio edition of 1623.

"We're taking better advantage of the Web-enabled world in which we live," Reynolds said. "Imagine researching the Civil War or the Apollo moon landing and finding firsthand accounts of events and reading news stories from a wide variety of resources -- all from a single search.