Julien Gless with a Rolling Stone magazine dating from the 1970s. -

Numerize

  • A Briton, James Hyman, owns more than 160,000 magazines.

    It is the most important collection in the world according to the

    Guinness Book of Records

    .

  • All his journals are currently stored in a warehouse near London.

    But James Hyman would like to make them accessible and create a platform.

    "As for music, we would offer you something else depending on what you read", details Julien Gless, CEO of Numerize.

    The Alsatian company would be in charge of digitizing the entire collection.

  • The project is currently on standby, the fault of a lack of funding.

    It needs investors to see the light of day.

Not far from 2 km of shelves filled with more than 160,000 journals, or around 15 million rare pages stored in a warehouse located in South East London… This is what the largest collection of magazines in the world looks like.

The

Guinness World Records

attested in 2012: it is the Briton James Hyman who owns it.

What if this collection was now accessible from your smartphone?

"It would be online on a platform and as on Spotify for music, we would offer you something else depending on what you read", explains Julien Gless.

The general manager of the Alsatian SME Numerize was not at the origin of the project, but he is now part of it.

Since he offered the services of his company, specializing in the digitization of documents, to the former scriptwriter of the MTV channel in the 1990s.

The collection grows "every year from 15% to 20%"

“I read an article about him and decided to contact him.

For his work, he always bought two magazines, especially English-speaking ones like

Vogue

,

Rolling Stones

or

Play-Boy

and that's how he ended up with more than 50,000 copies.

Since then, the total has grown thanks to donations and the collection is still growing every year by 15% to 20%, ”explains the entrepreneur who was… quickly contacted again.

“James told me he had already received a lot of offers from boxes like ours, but I offered him something more.

"

“Between Christmas and New Year's Day”, 200 magazines were digitized “free of charge” in the premises of the SME in Hoerdt, in the Bas-Rhin.

Above all, Julien Gless is committed to promoting the great idea of ​​the collector, called “Hymag”.

Because to see the light of day, the project needs to be funded.

"Ideally, it would take between 4 and 6 million euros which would serve a lot for copyright but we could already start digitizing from 500,000 euros", he still estimates, by launching an appeal to interested investors.

An online prize pool has already been set up but it is struggling to take off, with 25,000 pounds sterling collected to date (around 28,000 euros).

James Hyman in his warehouse in London.

- Jake Green

“A lot of people are going to see the collection in the warehouse already, Netflix producers, even Kate Moss, but this content could be available to everyone.

There are very rare magazines, which cannot be found on Google, ”insists the general manager of the French company, citing a review which“ dates from 1800 ”or limited editions“ not found on the market ”.

Julien Gless does not hide it, Numerize also has everything to gain from this colossal site being carried out.

“For our brand image, that would allow us to move from an SME to a company with an international dimension” and would also encourage people to hire.

For the current collection, it would be necessary to recruit an additional “six employees”.

Duration of work for digitization but also optical character recognition which allows you to search for a word in any text?

“About a year.

Of course, it's faster than if you do this at home with your printer!

"

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