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New York, NY: Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), the leader in future proofing content to be used in everything from eBooks to online training manuals and archived documents, has begun work with the American Alpine Club (AAC). The AAC will be digitizing the archives of three of its major publications for the climbing community: Accidents in North American Mountaineering, the American Alpine Journal, and its early predecessor, Alpina Americana.

The AAC is part of a continuing trend of companies outside of traditional publishing realizing the potential value of their archived content. “The AAC is the perfect example of an organization that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as requiring content conversion services,” said Mark Gross, CEO of DCL. “So often we encounter companies and groups who think that they don’t need content conversion because they aren’t publishers. Then they realize the value of their content. In this day and age, everyone is a publisher.”

“We’ve been a hub of the American climbing community for more than a century,” said Erik Lambert, Information & Marketing Director at the American Alpine Club. “We’ve documented the most significant climbs and accidents along the way, but we’ve never had the capacity to share all of that information with the world. Digitizing our annual publications, going back to 1907, will make tens of thousands of important stories available to climbers and researchers worldwide.”

The project spans more than 30,000 pages. When complete, every volume of Accidents in North American Mountaineering and Alpina Americana will be accessible online for the first time. The American Alpine Journal search will get a user-friendly upgrade.

“We spent a great deal of time researching digital conversion vendors,” said Lambert, “and were extremely impressed with the level of knowledge and personalized customer service that DCL provided. Their initial work to-date has borne out our first impressions.”

A project of this magnitude cannot be completed overnight, but rather takes patience and attention to detail. Accuracy is a primary concern for this conversion, as the climbing community depends on it. Accidents in North American Mountaineering gives climbers life-saving skills, and the American Alpine Journal helps climbers plan expeditions to the world’s most remote places. The AAC plans to deliver the complete library of searchable content in late Q3 or early Q4 2013.

“We are eager to watch the project evolve and come to fruition,” said Lambert. “We are very confident in the DCL team and know they will produce high-quality work that will benefit every member of the worldwide climbing community.”