Building on its groundbreaking efforts in using technology to open up public records, the Office of Secretary of State will be making hundreds of thousands of historic corporations documents available to the public online, free of charge.

As part of a massive project involving the preservation of corporate documents dating back to the beginning of Washington's statehood, the agency's Corporations Division is working to scan approximately 1.8 million pages into the state's digital archives. It is one of the first states in the country to make this kind of information searchable on the Internet.

Visitors to the Digital Archives Web site can now instantly track down any type of corporate record that has existed since before 2003 – from the original document of formation for Starbucks to a merger of a local family business.
 
This month the public can start accessing documents from state-registered businesses and companies with names A through E. During the next nine months, additional documents will be scanned and added online, as well as trademark and charities records. The goal is to have corporate documents from the early 1800s to 2003 online at the Digital Archives by June 2009.
 
Prior to this project, a person who wanted to get a copy of a historic corporate document in Washington needed to put in a records request and wait for the request to be filed.
 
The Office of Secretary of State gained national recognition when it launched the nation's first-ever digital archives in 2004.