Subscribers to medical journals enjoy rapid access to both current issues and upcoming articles through the publishers’ websites. Readers are also provided with archived back issues, the historical span of which depends upon factors such as the journal’s longevity and the resources of the publisher. Frequently cited, widely circulated general medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine (first published in 1812), The Lancet (first published in 1823), and the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (first published in 1926) have online archives that date back to their first issues. Among high-circulation general ophthalmology journals, Ophthalmology has just recently provided back issues from 1965, whereas online archives of JAMA Ophthalmology and the British Journal of Ophthalmology have also been recently extended back to 1929 and 1917, respectively. Now after an intensive effort to provide the medical community with access to a rich collection of historical writings, we are pleased to announce that the American Journal of Ophthalmology (AJO) has just expanded its archived volumes back to 1918.

The AJO, one of the oldest professional journals in the United States, has been published in 3 different forms. The first series of the AJO, run by Dr Julius Homberger from 1862 to 1864, was the first specialty journal published in the Western Hemisphere. The second series was a St Louis monthly started in 1884 by Adolph Alt, with J.H. Chalmers and Company as publishers. The modern AJO—now in its third series of publication—resulted from the consolidation of 4 journals (including the then-named AJO) in 1918 by Dr Edward Jackson of Denver. The journal has since been continuously published and was eventually acquired by Elsevier Publishing from the Ophthalmic Publishing Company in 1998. The founding members of the Ophthalmic Publishing Company were Drs Edward Norton, Bruce Spivey, Bradley Straatsma, Edward Maumenee, and David Shoch, representing the giants of the era in ophthalmology. Because the AJO has had multiple publishers, a complete in-house archive of paper issues never existed. Therefore, when the AJO’s editorial leadership elected to expand the online archives, a complete paper collection was neither readily available nor easily accessible to the Elsevier staff and the AJO editorial board. Thus began a multi-year endeavor to collect AJO back issues and convert them into a digital format appropriate for online archiving.

As might be expected, several sources were accessed in order to obtain original paper manuscripts for the project. The Department of Ophthalmology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida possessed a complete collection of volumes from 1972–1997 that had been compiled by the current Editor-in-Chief. These bound editions dated from his years as a resident at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

The department also had the good fortune to receive a collection of AJO editions dating from 1921–1951 as a bequest from a retiring ophthalmologist. These volumes from the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, and World War II era highlight ophthalmology’s early focus on anatomy, pathology, case presentations, and improved characterization of disease pathophysiology. Owing to the generosity of Dr Allan Armstrong Hunter, Jr.; his wife, Helen-Louise Armstrong; and his father, the late Dr G. Victor Simpson, Elsevier received volumes from 1932–1968. Additional volumes were obtained through the persistent efforts of Drs Kenneth J. Hoffer and H. John Shammus of Southern California. After these collections were consolidated, a small number of volumes were still missing. The AJO’s executive publisher, Michael Weston, obtained digital copies of the missing volumes from the British Library, Euston Road, London.

With a complete library in hand, the AJO staff began the arduous task of digitizing the data. As expected, this costly, time-consuming task proved more difficult than obtaining the complete set of volumes. To create PDF files suitable for website archiving, the volumes were unbound, each page was scanned manually, pages from unique manuscripts were collated, and files were saved in the appropriate format. In total, this required the archiving of 124 volumes containing 33 927 articles and 145 314 pages. The considerable cost of this project was generously absorbed by Elsevier. The end result is a complete archive from 1918 through the current issue that resides within the “Archives and Issues—Back Issues” tab of the AJO website. The archive is also available on Science Direct, Elsevier’s full-text digital scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from almost 2200 active journals and more than 26 000 books.

Throughout its 130-year history as the second-longest continuously running American ophthalmology journal, the AJO has been an important vehicle for disseminating new ideas and information to the worldwide ophthalmic community. The AJO has published some of ophthalmology’s most important manuscripts. One of the AJO’s important ongoing academic contributions is the Edward Jackson Lecture, an academic highlight of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting. Each of these named lectures is delivered by an internationally renowned ophthalmologist who is being recognized for career-long contributions to ophthalmology. Lecturers usually present comprehensive historic perspectives on important ophthalmic conditions, and each is published in the AJO. This valuable collection of lectures provides summaries of conditions such as optic nerve sheath hemorrhage (Frank B. Walsh), diabetes and glaucoma (Bernard Becker), and retinal neovascularization (Arnall Patz) as they were viewed in their day.

Rapid access to 97 years of back issues now enables AJO subscribers to easily and economically enjoy, research, and cite important manuscripts from ophthalmology’s rich history. Researchers performing systematic reviews and meta-analyses can more easily complete their data acquisition. This new archive also constitutes an important online resource for brick-and-mortar libraries endeavoring to fill manuscript requests from their users. Institutions may access the archive through Science Direct by paying a one-time fee.

We hope that readers and researchers will take full advantage of this expanded library. By better familiarizing ourselves with the rich written history of ophthalmology, we acquire an improved understanding and appreciation of ophthalmic sciences, research, and patient care.