ProQuest and Rutgers University are teaming to make the University's acclaimed Thomas A. Edison Papers more accessible to scholars and students around the world. More than 175,000 of Edison's laboratory notebooks, diaries, business records, correspondence, and other documents will now be available in ProQuest® History Vault, boosting access, precision search and cross-referencing of these documents with other digital archives from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The Thomas A. Edison Papers Collection provides an intimate look at the life, work, and vision of the inventor credited with integrating the worlds of science, technology, movies, business, and finance.
An inventor, businessman, scientist, industrialist, entrepreneur and engineer, Edison laid the foundation for the age of electricity, recorded sound, motion pictures, and the introduction of modern industrial research. This extraordinary project has carefully gathered the materials from the Edison National Historical Park that document his life and work. With more than 150,000 pages of materials that have never been available online, it encompasses six parts: Five collections that span Edison's life and work from 1850 through 1919; and a sixth collection encompasses Motion Picture Catalogs – a source for studying America in transition as filmmakers reflected industrialization, technological innovation, the changing role of women, race relations, and the birth of new communication and mass entertainment.
Sophisticated digitisation and search technology make crisp reproductions of these materials more accessible than ever before, improving research outcomes in areas as diverse as the history of science and technology, business and economic history, popular culture and film history, as well as social and labor history.
ProQuest's History Vault Program encompasses 11 million pages of digitized primary source content that documents and improves research of the American experience.
History Vault is one of a rich variety of historical collections from ProQuest that unlock new research insights for students, scholars and librarians around the world. For more than 75 years, the company has partnered with an extraordinary range of organizations and individuals, preserving and building access to information collections. Robust and evolving technology brings that content to researchers where they are, enabling them to explore at will – whether page by page, reviewing full-colour scans that are as crisp as the real thing, or via precision search that takes them to the exact nugget of information they're seeking.
