If you’re a Sports Illustrated collector–or fan–you’ll fall in love with the magazine’s new VAULT web site, which serves up virtually every story, cover, photograph or ad that has ever appeared in the magazine–with some new additions.

SI VAULT, a free and comprehensive digitized history of the modern sports era since the birth of Sports Illustrated in 1954, is now live.

The VAULT combines the power of SI’s voice and editorial integrity with state-of-the-art technologies. The online Sports Illustrated magazine archives offer 150,000 stories, 2,800 covers and 500,000 photographs from the pages of the nation’s favorite sports magazine. The goal is to give anyone who goes to the site the feeling that they own the entire SI collection from ‘54 to present.

The new site unlocks sports history with new search capabilities that link video clips (powered by Truveo), blogs and user-generated content (Wikipedia sports
encyclopedia) — as well as collectibles and memorabilia from across the Web via eBay.

“This is an opportunity for SI to weave historical perspective into the daily conversation of sports,” said Paul Fichtenbaum, Managing Editor, SI.COM. “Passionate sports fans engage in debate, trivia and comparison of one
generation to another so for those fans SI VAULT will be an invaluable resource of information.”

SI editors will curate the site daily to reflect current issues and topics, refreshing editorial themes within historical context and perspective as breaking news warrants. By doing so the SI VAULT will enable sports fans to relive historic stories and performances as they relate to the games and moments that matter most now.

“The SI VAULT is a gateway for sports fans in their journey to enjoy their favorite sports through content from the modern sports era as well as video. By combining SI archives with cutting-edge technology, web tools and sport functionality search capability we have created a destination that will grow through the active participation of site visitors and through search engine discovery,” said Jeff Price, President, SI DIGITAL.

Features of SI VAULT include:

• For the first time sports fans will have access to all Sports Illustrated magazine archives – articles, photos, covers and SI.com;
• Video search capabilities powered by Truveo;
• A Wikipedia component where fans can contribute memories, useful information, etc.;
• Cover-to-cover interactive views of SI issues 1954-1995 available immediately with remaining issues soon to be installed;
• Capability to search by name, sport, year, decade, team and more;
• eBay technology will link to popular memorabilia related to specific search topics;
• Contextual links between SI.COM and SI.COM/VAULT;
• Daily updates of SI.COM content and weekly updates of magazine content.

SI partnered with Turner Digital for the site’s construction which included converting volumes of print material into a universal digital template that would foster maximum flexibility in packaging and presentation. Because of the dynamic nature of the site (SI will continually update it with SI.com and weekly issue content). Turner developed a sophisticated content classification system that
will support an infinite amount of site searches.