Maclean's soon to roll out digital archive of 108 years of publication

Maclean's magazine, this year celebrating 108 years of continuous publication, will be unveiling a digital archive of its issues going back to the first edition in October 1905. 

Until now, past issues of Maclean's have only been available in digital form going back to 1986. Anything before that meant plowing through a card catalogue and microfilm copies, if they exist. So, as the magazine says in a post, the bulk of its history is not available online to readers and researchers.

If all goes well, it says, the archive's so-called "back end" will be done by the end of this year and making a publicly available archive will happen starting in 2014. The work has been done with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and ProQuest will be making a PAO (periodical archives online) database of our past coverage. 

"It’s a rich collection: there are the historic covers, including some by Group of Seven members like A.J. Casson, Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald, and a celebrated cast of contributors, including Margaret Atwood, Robert Service, Farley Mowat, David Suzuki, W.O. Mitchell, Ray Bradbury, Mordecai Richler, Bertrand Russell, and Lucy Maud Montgomery. That’s not to mention a veritable who’s who of Canadian journalists who’ve edited and filled our pages: Ralph Allen, Pierre Berton, Robert Fulford, McKenzie Porter, Peter C. Newman, Christina McCall, Barbara Moon, Peter Gzowski, Trent Frayne, June Callwood and Fred Bodsworth, to name a few."

The company (Rogers Publishing, successor to Maclean Hunter) is missing a few of the issues from the first few decades and later may call upon its readers to help locate them.