"There's no other archive like the Hartford Courant," said Rod Gauvin, ProQuest senior vice president.  "This was the most popular newspaper in America when the country was being formed and it fervently supported the rebels. Revolutionary America was a time of bitter politics and the immediacy of that spirit... the passion that drove the revolution is captured in the Courant. You can't express that feeling in a history book; it's diluted when we filter events with hindsight."

The Hartford Courant's slogan is "Older than the Nation." The newspaper was an ardent supporter of a strong new central government and attacked Thomas Jefferson and his supporters as radical anarchists.  Additionally, the Hartford Courant contains a contemporary chronicle of slavery in early American society : from 18th century slave advertisements to its opposition to national fugitive slave laws, the newspaper was a major voice in the ideological war over slavery that presaged the Civil War.

ProQuest will digitally reproduce every issue of the Hartford Courant from front to back, capturing news stories, editorials, photos, graphics and ads. Until now, its archives have been preserved on microfilm. ProQuest's search platform is known for its user-friendly interface, allowing even novice researchers to navigate the database unassisted.   Multiple search options -- keyword, dates, author's name, article type and others -- zero in on specific articles or topics. To see the text, the user simply selects the article, and its image is displayed. Users can choose to view the article alone or see it in the context of the full page. They can also browse through entire issues page by page as they would a printed paper.

The Hartford Courant's archives become part of ProQuest Historical Newspapers , the world's largest digital newspaper archive, encompassing 14 million pages and growing. A core research holding in major libraries around the world, it includes such major newspapers as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe and The Chicago Defender, one of the most influential African-American newspapers.  Until now, the Chicago Tribune archive provided the earliest newspaper accounts, dating from 1849.

Users of the Hartford Courant's digital archive will be able to cross-search with all the newspapers in ProQuest Historical Newspapers as well as in ProQuest's acclaimed American Periodical Series, which covers periodicals from 1741 through 1900.

The digitization of The Hartford Courant is one in a series of enhancements to the ProQuest news publications program. Each is aimed at building a core of products that will allow comprehensive research to be done easily from a single starting point.  In addition to significantly expanding the availability of digital archives, ProQuest has recently announced enhancements to its current news program including the launch of Latin American Newsstand, which provides library patrons with comprehensive coverage of Latin America's most prestigious newspapers in their native Spanish and Portuguese. ProQuest's extensive current collection now includes more than 300 full-text newspapers from around the world, creating a flexible, comprehensive current news resource. ProQuest is also distributor of NewspaperDirect, a unique delivery system through which libraries get direct, immediate access to over 250 international and domestic dailies in full-page format, allowing them to provide same-day international newspaper service to their patrons.

For more information about ProQuest news products visit the company on the Web at www.il.proquest.com.

ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and publishing information worldwide for researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide.Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-HealeyTM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary®, SIRS® and Voyager Expanded Learning educational resources.  For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.

ProQuest Information and Learning is a business unit of ProQuest Company (www.proquestcompany.com), which was recently named one of the top 100 fastest growing technology companies in the United States by Business 2.0 and one of the 200 best small companies by Forbes Magazine.