CRL has undertaken an initiative to expand digital access to its American historical journals, and to help ensure the survival of “last copies” of these important primary source materials. The use of these journals has been increasing in recent years, while the originals are becoming more rare and fragile. This situation prompted us to explore ways to provide electronic access to these materials for all members, and to protect the originals from harm or loss.

CRL is working with ProQuest to digitize a portion of CRL’s American historical journals. In June 2009, ProQuest launched a new collection, “American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries” (APCRL), which ultimately will contain full text and full-color scans of nearly three million pages of CRL journal content.

Collection Contents

The selection list reveals a range of historically significant special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and several photographic periodicals. Notable titles include:

• American Annual of Photography
• American Artisan and Hardware Record
• The American Builder
• American Gas-light Journal
  
• Concrete
• The Craftsman
• Electrical Age
• Hamptons Magazine
• The Labor Journal
• Woman’s Protest against Woman Suffrage

Archiving the Collection

As with its JSTOR collection, CRL will systematically archive all print volumes of the journals included in this collection. This will ensure that “last copies” of these important materials will continue to be held for the CRL community. CRL also accepta contributions of volumes from member libraries to fill gaps in CRL holdings, for inclusion in the APCRL collection and in the corresponding archive. This arrangement offers two benefits to CRL libraries: it will make important but fragile materials more easily available to students and researchers in the CRL community, and the CRL archive will offer relief from the costs of local storage, preservation, and replacement.

The APCRL initiative augments the ongoing digitization of CRL collections in response to researchers' requests, and the systematic digitization of foreign newspapers in partnership with NewsBank for the World Newspaper Archive.

Questions?

Contact us at aps [at] crl [dot] edu