Internet Archive Adds High-Quality Computerworld Content From Microfilm

Internet Archive is now home to high-quality digitized versions of vintage Computerworld issues, an update to the content made possible using microfilm archives. The records provide a look at technology and its development over the decades — the first volume was published back in the summer of 1967 and the last in 2014.

The Internet Archive added some Computerworld issues years ago, giving the public free access to these vintage materials. The only problem? Much of the content was scanned from paper and the rest was digitized from some low-quality microfilm. That changes with this latest update.

In a blog post, the Internet Archive explained that high-quality microfilm containing the Computerworld archives has been acquired and digitized. This makes decades' worth of technology innovation available to anyone interested in reading it, including filtering options and full-text searching.

You can quickly see the difference in quality between the old and new digitizations — here's the older, lower-quality example, and here's the new high-quality archive. Internet Archive notes that the content can be downloaded for research purposes.

There is one obvious downside to digitizing microfilm copies rather than the paper issues — the content is entirely in grayscale. That's not a big deal, however, given the nature of the publication; the historical importance of the computer industry news is the point of interest and most information graphs remain useful even in grayscale.