Digital Archives

The back issues of the Michigan Daily, along with the Michiganensian and Gargoyle, comprise an extraordinary history of the University of Michigan that deserves to be preserved for future students, alumni, historians, and the general public. When an author and 1973 Daily alumna visited Ann Arbor on a research trip, she was unable to use the bound volumes of The Daily because, tantalizing though those volumes were, a page-by-page search through the unindexed volumes would have been impossibly time- consuming.

The material, though technically preserved was in a practical sense unusable. But when all 117 years of The Michigan Daily are digitized and searchable, every page since 1890 will become accessible with a click of the mouse. This rich collection will become available to the world for the first time, offering not just a magnificent history of student life at the University of Michigan, but a record of young people's perspectives on the history of our state, our nation, and our world. There are considerable financial challenges to face in creating this archive, but we have already been able to take the first step by digitizing the microfilmed back issues of the Daily. The next, critical step of indexing many thousands of articles will only become possible with additional support totaling $190,000.