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Access More Than 250,000 Historic Documents in the IEEE Xplore® Digital Library

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The IEEE legacy project, started in 2003, is part of IEEE’s plan to digitize all papers from its technology journals, in an effort to bring historic, scholarly content to new generations of researchers and practitioners.



IEEE Xplore Provides Link to Engineering History

The IEEE legacy collection represents a critical evolutionary period that chronicles the development of today’s information age. With the addition of these historic publications, researchers will have access to a tremendous repository of papers by visionaries in the electrical engineering profession. As of 1 January 2009, over 250,000 total documents from more than 100 titles have been loaded—with more than 6,000 articles loaded in March 2009.

Subscribers to the IEEE/IET Electronic Library (IEL), IEEE Enterprise, and IEEE Member Digital Library will have access to this material.

These historic periodical titles are available in the IEEE Xplore digital library and will be updated periodically.

IEEE Periodical Legacy Inventory Report
(XLS, 128 KB)
(November 2009)
IEEE Conference Legacy Inventory Report
(XLS, 72 KB)
(November 2009)

Due to the magnitude of this project, volumes may not be 100% complete. IEEE is working towards filling any gaps. For information on donating missing issues, please contact your account manager.

The IEEE Xplore digital library currently contains more than 2 million documents. Included are papers from more than 143 IEEE journals, 2,800 IEEE standards, and over 900 annual conference proceedings. The majority of the content dates back to 1988, though content from select publications dates back as far as 1913.

 Printable Flyer
Download flyer about historic IEEE content (PDF, 106 KB)

 Recent legacy additions
Complete collection of Proceedings of the IEEE and IEEE Computer Magazine issues
Historical digital content from over 40 IEEE titles including IEEE Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Newsletter; IEEE Control Systems Magazine; IEEE Electron Device Letters; IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics; IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems; and many more
Papers from European solid-state circuits and device research conferences dating back to 1953

 Timeline of milestones

March 2009
Over 6,000 articles loaded

October 2007
Over 34,600 documents of historic content from select publications back as far as 1913

April 2007
Over 55,700 documents of historic content from select publications back as far as 1913

November 2005
More than 1,700 papers from European solid-state circuits and device research conferences

August 2005
15,000
historic articles on electron devices

July 2005
12,000
papers and articles published in the Proceedings of the IEEE from 1963 to 1987

January 2003
80,000
documents of historic content from select publications back as far as 1950



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