By: (AP) The back issues of
The Wall Street Journal, dating to the paper's founding in 1889, have been scanned into a searchable database -- advertisements, obituaries, and all.
The company responsible, ProQuest Co., announced two weeks ago that it had done the same for
The New York Times, which began publishing in 1851.
Unlike most electronic databases, which contain only text, ProQuest's "Historical Newspapers" archive brings up full pages, with images and graphics. It is reachable via the Internet, but subscriptions are available only to companies and institutions such as libraries.
ProQuest, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is also scanning
The Washington Post and
The Christian Science Monitor and hopes to make them available next year.
"We are beginning with national papers, then as time goes on we hope to add regional papers and local papers," said ProQuest spokeswoman Tina Creguer.
Creguer said it was a significant challenge to scan the newspapers from microfilm, often shot decades after the publication of the paper.
ProQuest created special software to clean up the scans and to electronically "read" the paper to make it searchable.
It took 15 months to process the two papers.
The New York Times back issues from 1851 to 1999 consist of 3.4 million pages.
The Wall Street Journal from 1889 to 1985 weighs in at 1 million pages.
Later issues of the papers have already been available electronically.
On the Web:
http://www.proquest.com/proquest/histdemo/default.shtml
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