family lineages and history: EMC Heritage Trust Project Grant to Help Library Digitize and Preserve Largest Collection of Canadian Company Annual Reports

C.B. "Bud" Johnston Library collection includes the histories of Canadian Tire Inc. and Labatt Breweries of Canada

TORONTO, November 10, 2011 /Canada NewsWire/ - EMC Corporation today announced the C.B. "Bud" Johnston Library, part of The University of Western Ontario Libraries, was one of eight organizations worldwide receiving an EMC Heritage Trust Project grant through the company's Information Heritage Initiative program. Through the initiative, EMC has donated more than $20 million to date to help advance the preservation and accessibility of information heritage. The 2011 grants will support projects that digitize, protect and improve access to cultural information in communities around the world.

"This is the fourth year of the EMC Heritage Trust Project and the fourth time we have had at least one Canadian organization receiving a grant," said Michael Sharun, Managing Director of EMC Canada. "Preserving Canada's heritage plays an important role in maintaining our cultural identity and EMC is proud to support organizations seeking to make this country's past more accessible."

"Photographs, ancient writings, letters, film, music and visual art are all part of the world's information heritage. Yet many of these historical treasures are at risk of disappearing," said Bill Teuber, Vice Chairman, EMC Corporation. "Through the EMC Heritage Trust Project, we are dedicated to helping local community organizations worldwide preserve and protect these historic artifacts so that future generations can continue to enjoy and learn from them."

The C.B. "Bud" Johnston Library houses the largest collection of Canadian businesses' annual reports in the country. The US$10,000 Heritage Trust Project grant will be used to help digitize the collection and make it more accessible to researchers.

"Our library is shifting from being a storehouse for printed material to being more of a knowledge centre for the Richard Ivey School of Business, which is also part of The University of Western Ontario," says Joyce Garnett, University Librarian. "The goal is to allow people to better interact in a digital environment and digitizing the annual report collection will be a big step forward in achieving that goal."

The Canadian Annual Reports Collection encompasses more than 6,300 firms, dating back as far as 1867. The Libraries' collection includes the annual reports and other documents of two iconic Canadian companies - Canadian Tire Inc. and Labatt Breweries of Canada, now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev. The reports are of value not only because of the financial record they provide of individual companies, but also because they present a view of the social and cultural thoughts from the past and the corporate stories of individual companies.

Digitizing the collection not only makes it more accessible; it helps protect the collection from damage or theft.

The EMC Information Heritage Initiative program was formalized in 2007 to recognize organizations and individuals that protect and preserve invaluable cultural information from around the world through digitization, allowing readily accessible online research and education. Using the same criteria for excellence that guide this initiative and deployed in local communities, the EMC Heritage Trust Project was created to recognize and support people and projects that practice and inspire the digital stewardship of the world's information heritage. For 2011, EMC received 95 applications from 19 countries for grant consideration.

The EMC Heritage Trust Project grant recipients were selected based on the following criteria: potential size of the audience that would benefit from access to this information; the at-risk status of the information and why it is urgent to digitize; and how significant the EMC grant would be to the overall success of the project.

For more information on the EMC Heritage Trust Project, please visit: www.EMC.com/heritage_trust.

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