ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 19, 2008 — The acclaimed Periodicals Archive Online will be available to 67 key research institutions in Canada through an arrangement between Micromedia ProQuest and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). Periodicals Archive Online is renowned for its access to international, scholarly literature from 37 subject areas in the arts, humanities and social sciences, spanning nearly 200 years. CRKN is expanding the universe of digital information to build research capacity in Canada’s universities.

“Periodicals Archive Online is well-suited to meet the growing need for humanities research throughout Canada,” said Simon Beale, Senior Vice President of Global Sales for ProQuest. “We’re honored that CRKN has chosen Micromedia ProQuest as a partner in fulfilling its goal of expanding access to scholarly, digital content in the Canadian research community.”

Deb deBruijn, CRKN Executive Director, says, “CRKN is pleased to partner with Micromedia ProQuest in bringing this high caliber content to our universities’ researchers and students. The national agreement for Periodicals Archive Online will provide a rich and unique set of resources for our community, and will foster innovative and interdisciplinary research across Canada.”

Periodicals Archive Online’s six multidisciplinary collections offer a total of 500 full-run titles with more than 1.7 million articles and 10 million pages in full text. Nearly 20% of the titles from the databases are in languages other than English, including coverage of leading research publications in French, Spanish, and German. Its platform includes powerful features that support the research process. For example, a Quick Search feature on every page of the service is augmented by sophisticated “post-search” results filtering that helps users get to relevant results quickly. A special “My Archive” feature saves searches, records and notes for future research sessions in a personal research area. Periodicals Archive Online also offers free MARC records, Z39.50 support for federated searching, OpenURL compliance, citation software support, and COUNTER-compliant usage statistics.

ProQuest’s partnership with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network to provide Periodicals Archive Online is part of the company’s ongoing initiative to expand access to the world’s most significant research collections, and builds upon earlier agreements to provide Canada’s Heritage from 1844 - The Globe and Mail, ProQuest® Historical Newspapers, and the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 19th and 20th Centuries.

More information about Periodicals Archive Online is available at pao.chadwyck.com.

About CRKN
The Canadian Research Knowledge Network is a partnership of Canadian universities, dedicated to expanding digital content for the academic research enterprise in Canada. Through the coordinated leadership of librarians, researchers and administrators, CRKN undertakes large-scale content acquisition and licensing initiatives in order to build knowledge infrastructure and research capacity in Canada’s universities.

This agreement was reached under CRKN’s Digital Content Infrastructure for the Human and Social Sciences (DCI) Project. The DCI project was funded under the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s National Platforms Fund, in partnership with 8 provincial governments and 67 Canadian universities.

About ProQuest
ProQuest provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world’s scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts, literature, and social science to science, technology, and medicine. ProQuest is part of Cambridge Information Group (www.cambridgeinformationgroup.com).

ProQuest’s vast content pools are available to researchers through libraries of all types and include the world’s largest digital newspaper archive, periodical databases comprising the output of more than 9,000 titles and spanning more than 500 years, the pre-eminent dissertation collection, and various other scholarly collections. Users access the information through the ProQuest® and CSA Illumina^TM online information systems, Chadwyck-Healey^TM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary® and SIRS® educational resources, Ulrich’s® Serials Analysis System, COS Scholar Universe, and Serials Solutions® resource management tools. Through the expertise of business units Serials Solutions and RefWorks/COS, ProQuest provides technological tools that allow researchers and libraries to better manage and use their information resources. For more information, visit www.proquest.com, www.proquest.co.uk/, and www.csa.com

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