The Walter P. Reuther Library announces the launch of the Virtual Motor City (VMC), a collaborative project between the Walter P. Reuther Library and the Digital Library Services team of the Wayne State University Library Systems, on March 2 at 5:30 p.m. in the Woodcock Gallery of the Walter P. Reuther Library.

Made possible by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, the Virtual Motor City project marks the first time that a large collection of visual materials from the Reuther Library will be available for viewing on the Internet.

In October 2002, the Walter P. Reuther Library, in the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA), and the Wayne State University Libraries received more than $100,000 for the digitization of 15,000 images from the Reuther Library Detroit News Collection. Each image, ranging from the time of the establishment of the Detroit News by William Scripps in 1873 to about 1983, was selected for the VMC project based on its historical significance and research value. Most of the images focus on a 42-year time span from 1928 to 1970.

The grant also called for original cataloging of available image data providing for more complex searches of the online database and allowing search engines to locate the cataloged images.

VMC makes The Detroit News Database, the corresponding database for the collection and most heavily used of the Reuther Library's research databases, available to researchers around the world, 24 hours a day.

A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Woodcock Gallery with formal remarks at 6 p.m. The "Faces of Detroit" exhibit will be available for viewing and a demonstration of the online collection of photos will be presented. Refreshments will be served during the event that is open to the general public. For further information contact Elizabeth Clemens at (313) 577-1663 or ag5489@wayne.edu.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.

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