spectra. In addition, we measured column densities of DLAs/sub-DLAs seen in the spectra of these quasars and not reported in the literature. In a companion paper [@zafar12b], we built a carefully selected subset of this dataset to study the statistical properties of DLAs and sub-DLAs, their column density distribution, and the contribution of sub-DLAs to the gas mass density. Further studies, based on specifically designed subsets of the dataset built in this paper, will follow (e.g., studies of metal abundances, molecules).

This work is organized as follows. In §2, information about the UVES quasar data sample is provided. In §3, the properties of the damped absorbers are described. This section also summarizes the details of the new column density measurements. In §4, some global properties of the full sample are presented and lines-of-sight of interest are reported in §5. All log values and expressions correspond to log base 10.

The Quasar Sample
=================

ESO Advanced Data Products
--------------------------

In 2007, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) managing the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory has made available to the international community a set of Advanced Data Products for some of its instruments, including the high-resolution UVES[^1] instrument. The reduced archival UVES 