Chances are, you haven’t thought about microfilm in years — probably not since you were in college or high school, and certainly not since the Internet made research something you could do at home in a bathrobe.

Even the web, though, has yet to capture everything there is to know. ProQuest LLC is working to fill in the gaps.

ProQuest scans and archives millions of documents, including every edition of The New York Times, 2.5 million dissertations, the entire literature collection from London’s British Museum and even The Ann Arbor News.

If print media is dying, the business of archiving isn’t.

Funded by universities, libraries and independent publishers, ProQuest hauled in more than $27 million in business last year. In February the company moved into a half of an 80,000-square-foot facility at James L. Hart Parkway in Ypsilanti Township.

Although ProQuest considered relocating to Ohio, the company decided to stay home, said Elliot Forsyth, a senior vice president for ProQuest. The company, which has gone through several transitions and ownership changes, can trace its Ann Arbor roots back 72 years.

“Our history is here,” Forsyth said at a recent event to celebrate the move. “We felt it was in everyone’s best interest to keep it here.”

It also was in the best interest of Ypsilanti Township, Supervisor Brenda Stumbo said, to work out a deal that would bring ProQuest to the township. The board granted a 50 percent tax abatement for seven years on ProQuest’s $4.7 million investment.

“They have 62 jobs now, and they’re going to have 71. That’s good news,” Stumbo said. “That’s why we supported a tax abatement.”

The local support helped seal the decision, said Vince Price, vice president of global operations.

"We settled on Ypsilanti Township for a couple reasons," he said. "The township and county and government agencies made it advantageous for us to be there, so we're very thrilled with that. It was close to a lot of our staff. We have staff who had 30-40 years of experience. That allowed us to migrate the operation very efficiently."

The company has divided its 40,000 square feet into several stations, where employees scan, index and even iron print products to film them.

“One of the things about this building is it’s a very tall building and allows us to better utilize our space, reducing our footprint,” said Rick Griffith, a director of operations.

There’s a loading dock in the back, where print publications come in by the pallet. Walking through ProQuest’s facility has the feel of a library storage room — which, in essence, it is.

Newspapers from San Francisco to North Carolina can be found awaiting their place in ProQuest’s permanent archiving system.

"We have the ability to produce all the microfilm products we've had in the past. We also have the ability to do our digital capture and scanning operations here," Griffith said.

Most importantly, he added, the facility has left room for advancements that ProQuest can't yet anticipate.

"It also gave us enough room to be able to expand and upgrade our workflows so we could be more efficient, and have the ability to work toward growing our business as more and more (technology) migrates to digital," Griffith said.