Digitizing the Time-Life News Service Correspondent Wires, 1930-1960, Phase 1: the Subject Files

FAIN: PW-285153-22

New York Historical (New York, NY 10024-5152)
Henry F. Raine (Project Director: July 2021 to present)

The digitization of 267 reels of microfilm containing the Subject Files from the Time-Life News Service Correspondent Wires dating from the 1930s to 1960. 

The New-York Historical Society proposes to digitize 267 reels of microfilm of Time-Life News Service Correspondent Wires (1930s-1960) that no longer exist in hard copy. Submitted by a global network of correspondents, the wires comprise the raw reporting that Time and Life staff used to write stories and form an extraordinary trove of information about a tumultuous, defining period in United States and world history. Since only a small portion of the correspondents’ submissions ever appeared in print, and they have only recently been opened to researchers, digitizing this unique set of microfilm will result in an essential resource for humanities scholarship. This is Phase 1 of a two- phase project that will ultimately result in the digitization of 576 reels of microfilm. The goals of the project are threefold: to preserve the content of the collection, which only exists in this one set of master microfilm; to make it freely available online; and to disseminate it to a large audience.