ANN ARBOR, Mich., February 24, 2005 - ProQuest Information and Learning, the largest provider of digital content from the 19th century, will digitize the full run of the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers from 1801 to 1900 for release later this year. It will become part of ProQuest's continuing program to support 19th-century scholarship, joining the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC), the bibliographic spine of the program, and other new resources. ProQuest Information and Learning, a unit of ProQuest Company, is an electronic publisher of content for libraries and educational institutions worldwide.

"This new research collection is a natural extension to ProQuest’s longstanding 19^th-century research initiative, which continues to draw on the vast collection of resources of the period available in the ProQuest Digital Vault.  In addition to comprehensive 19^th-century content, ProQuest will provide the sophisticated research tools necessary for a true scholarly experience,” said Suzanne BeDell, vice president of publishing for ProQuest. 

The digital collection of the British Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900 will include the detailed Chadwyck-Healey^TM subject index and searchable ASCII text and images. NSTC, already the seminal index for the 19th century, holds more than 1.2 million records from eight contributing libraries for titles published in the United Kingdomand the United Statesbetween 1801 and 1919. 

Additional components will be added to further define the new program, including:

• The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, from Taylor & Francis, the most authoritative index to periodicals available for the period 1824-1900
• Index to the Nineteenth Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900
• Palmer's Index to The Times, 1790-1905
• Citation records for selected ProQuest 19^th-century periodical and newspaper holdings, including the highly regarded American Periodical Series Online

This new content will make NSTC the most comprehensive finding aid for British and American monographs, periodicals and government documents for the 19^th century.  Through NSTC, users will be able to access full text or images from a wide variety of research collections via direct links or OpenURL. 

ProQuest will work with the academic community to create direct links to existing digital collections currently loaded and hosted locally, driving traffic to other important resources.  The company will also continue to cooperate with other commercial publishers to make the database an even stronger tool for organizing 19^th-century digital content.

ProQuest’s Digital Vault holds many resources from the period in its content portfolio, including:

• Early British Periodicals and English Literary Periodicals, a collection of more than 300 titles published during the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries.  They encompass a wide variety of subjects and information on events and culture of the time.  Many eminent writers of the period – including Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Eliot, and others – are featured as editors or contributors.  The periodicals include literary reviews, essays, miscellanies, satire and humor, political, religious, and women’s magazines published in England, Scotland and Ireland.
• 19^th Century Women Writers, a comprehensive collection of imaginative literature written when women first came into their own as authors.  Most of the works have never been recorded in any bibliography, nor have they been available in a format in which they may easily be read and compared.  The collection identifies 4,500 women writers, many for the first time.
• The 19^th Century General Collection, a microform program begun in 1986 to record materials from British Library holdings.  The single largest and most important source of 19^th century works for research and teaching, it holds more than 28,000 titles, all accessible through brief catalog records.  Each title was hand-selected by the editorial staff according to criteria developed by Robin Alston, a leading scholar on the period.

Free trials are available. Libraries may receive more information by contacting their account representative at 1-800-521-0600, ext. 3183 or 3452 (outside the U.S., call +44-1-223-215-512) or pqsales@il.proquest.com. Editors may call 1-800-521-0600, ext. 6489 or email pr@il.proquest.com.

About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as Chadwyck-Healey™, UMI®, 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 age and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others. 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, visit www.proquest.com or the ProQuest parent company website, www.cig.com.