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ProQuest Gifts Chadwyck-Healey Archive to the University of Cambridge Library

Cambridge, UK - ProQuest has gifted its entire Chadwyck-Healey Archive to the University of Cambridge Library.  The Chadwyck-Healey collections remain amongst the leading content collections in the ProQuest portfolio, supporting research and teaching in the humanities and social sciences. The Chadwyck-Healey Archive provides a detailed record of a spectrum of technologies beginning with offset litho reprinting, to microfilming and on-line, to the CD-ROM and the internet. 

Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, who sold the publishing house to ProQuest in 1999 said, “This is the only library publishing archive to have been preserved and I am delighted it has gone to the Cambridge University Library with whom we have always had a close relationship.”  Dr Patrick Zutschi, Keeper of Manuscripts and Archives, Cambridge University Library, responded, ”Cambridge University Library is delighted to have received the generous donation of the archive of the innovative publishing firm Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.  This extensive archive documents the history of this Cambridge-based firm, founded by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey in 1973.  It complements other business archives already housed in the University Library, including those of various publishing and printing firms.”

Chadwyck-Healey remains an active and important line of information sources within the ProQuest family of brands.  It built its reputation publishing digital collections, microforms, CD-ROMs and reprints in the humanities and social sciences for libraries all over the world, becoming the largest publisher of both English and German literature in electronic form.   Founded in same year as the British Library, Chadwyck-Healey built and retains a close relationship with the UK’s most illustrious library.  Cultural historians in the future will use the archives to examine the influence of this tie.

The Chadwyck-Healey Archive is uniquely comprehensive for a publisher archive.  For instance, scholars will find a complete set of all the sales brochures of publishers for the last 30 years.  The archive has already featured in  ‘The New Textual Technologies’  a chapter written by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey in The History of the Book, 2007, edited by Simon Elliot. Scholars will also be fascinated by the myriad projects documented in the archive from the Nineteenth Century Parliamentary Papers to the Russian Central Committee archive filming project with the Hoover Institution.

The Chadwyck-Healey Archive has been fully indexed.  The index will be available on the web through the Cambridge University Library.  This archive will be of interest to cultural historians, media and computer science historians, and library historians and historians of the book.  An official launch will be held at the University of Cambridge Library on October 20th, 2008.

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