Rotary has teamed up with Google to make nearly 100 years of The Rotarian available free online.

Full-color, searchable scans of all issues of the magazine from 1959 to 2008 are now available through Google Books, with more issues to follow. The site is accessible from The Rotarian's page on the RI Web site.

Users can select from a gallery of issues organized by decade or click "Search all issues" to search the entire catalog for a word or phrase.

The collaboration is part of an initiative to make Rotary's historical resources more accessible to Rotarians worldwide.

"Google is doing all of the scanning and indexing to make the material searchable -- and at no cost to Rotary," says Stephanie Giordano, archivist for Rotary International.

More than 72,000 pages will be available once Google finishes scanning and uploading all 1,100 issues. The first issue was published in January 1911, when the magazine was called The National Rotarian.

Some issues of interest include December 1979, which reported on Rotary's first polio immunization project; the February 2005 centennial issue; and issues from the 1980s discussing the admission of women into Rotary.

Try it for yourself. Browse past issues now.

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