The Archive CD Books Project

The Archive CD Books Project exists to make digital reproductions of old books available to the public, to donate original publications to libraries and other institutions, and to cooperate with these repositories to preserve their existing collections for future generations.

The project began in the UK in March 2000, and now has participating partner companies in several countries worldwide. Archive CD Books USA was formed in mid 2005.

Each partner company buys or borrows books from collectors and repositories in its native country and scans and reproduces them on CD-ROM and/or other media. Thousands of titles have already been published in this way and that number is growing daily. Each scanned book is then made available to all of the other partner companies.

This arrangement not only provides you with access to the Project's entire worldwide inventory of books on CD from the partner company in your native country, but it serves to reduce delivery time and shipping costs.

The U.S. company works with societies, libraries and individuals to bring you a wide range of U.S. historical resources. Our selection of books is assisted by Robert Charles Anderson, one of the pre-eminent genealogists in the United States. Anderson is a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists and is the Director of the Great Migration Study Project for the New England Historic Genealogical Society, editor of the Great Migration Newsletter, and co-editor of The American Genealogist. He serves as Genealogical Consultant to Archive CD Books USA.

We love old books! Unlike most scanning projects, we will never disbind or destroy any salvageable book in order to digitize it. In fact, the Archive CD Books Project preserves and regularly donates the books that it has scanned to needy libraries or societies. And when we borrow a book in order to scan it, we will frequently renovate or rebind it before returning it to its owner (along with a copy of the digital version, of course).

This uncommon focus on book preservation has lead to the cultivation of special relationships with many libraries, archives and book lovers around the world.

Our goal is to preserve these disintegrating old books and get them back into the hands of researchers who can use them. Your patronage of the Project helps us to accomplish that goal.

Click here to see some samples of the scanning process.