Digitizing the Maclean’s archives: Here’s where you come in

Last month we told you about the Maclean’s Historical Digitization Project, which has us building a digital archive of our 108-year history. The digitization is still in its early stages, but we’re making good progress, and hope to get started on the publicly accessible archive some time in 2014. In the meantime, we’ve been enjoying going through many of the old issues: reliving the war years through Beverley Baxter’s regular “London Letter,” or remembering (and then trying to forget) Canadian fashion in the ‘70s.

Now we’d like to invite you to get involved. Here’s how: although work on the project is going well, some issues from our collection are missing, unavailable or not in good enough condition for use in the project. We’d like to invite you to be a part of history by sharing your old Maclean’s magazines with us, helping build Canada’s largest digital newsmagazine archive. We’re currently accepting donations of magazines in good condition from a few specific points in our past. The issues we’re seeking fall in a range beginning with our first issue, in October 1905, up to and including December 1929, as well as the years 1931, 1934, and 1950. If you (or your brother, or your grandmother) would like to make a donation, or find out more about the specific issues we’re seeking, please contact us at [email protected] and tell us a bit about your history with Maclean’s — we would love to hear it.

For future updates on this groundbreaking project, check in here. The history of Maclean’s is the history of Canada, and we are thrilled to be putting together a digital archive to preserve this legacy. We hope you will join us.

Julia Armstrong is project manager for the Maclean’s Historical Digitization Project.