"These papers are of rich research value, recording events from the early 1800s through the two World Wars to today.  They influenced public opinion and social and political philosophy, and provided a forum for the ideas of hundreds of thinkers," said Mary Sauer-Games, ProQuest's vice-president of publishing for Chadwyck-Healey products.  "The Parliamentary Papers are the single most detailed primary source for research on Britain, its former colonies, and the world, and now every page is available online from 1801 right up to current times."

The papers include bills, reports, correspondence and command papers.  As with the 19^th Century papers, they will be full-text searchable with hit-term highlighting, bibliographic data and subject indexing.  High-quality scans of the original printed papers will allow users to see all of the accompanying illustrations, statistics and maps. 

In addition to full-text searching, users will be able to search and browse various specific fields, including title, subject, author, Parliamentary session, paper type, year and others.  Research results will include brief bibliographic citations with hyperlinks to more detailed records and related documents.  Researchers will also be able to view complete, digitized images of original pages from all the works in the database and even manipulate them.  For example, users can zoom in and out, print pages one at a time, or navigate between illustrations only. 

20^th Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers is part of ProQuest's ongoing initiative to expand access to the world's most significant historical research collections.  The company recently announced a number of projects to support faster, more comprehensive research on the 19th Century.  Later this year, ProQuest will launch C19: The Nineteenth Century Index -- a finding tool for 19th-century materials in multiple formats – which will include the first web-enabled version of the celebrated Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1824-1900).  British Periodicals, a digital archive of rare serials from the 17^th through early 20th centuries is also in the works.  

For more information about ProQuest research 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-Healey^TM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary®, SIRS® and Voyager Expanded Learning educational resources, and XanEdu® online faculty and student 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 Statesby Business 2.0 and one of the 200 best small companies by Forbes Magazine.