[A2k] Google news: bringing history online, one newspaper at a time

[Manon Ress]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspape=
r.html

Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time
9/08/2008 09:33:00 AM
For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance
have been conveyed in newsprint -- from revolutions and politics to
fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the
globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing
every story ever written. And it's our goal to help readers find all
of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest
national daily.

The problem is that most of these newspapers are not available online.
We want to change that.

Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers
accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper
publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let's say
you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for
[Americans walk on moon] on Google News Archive Search, and you'll be
able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be
able to browse through them exactly as they were printed --
photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all.

This effort expands on the contributions of others who've already
begun digitizing historical newspapers. In 2006, we started working
with publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post to
index existing digital archives and make them searchable via the
Google News Archive. Now, this effort will enable us to help you find
an even greater range of material from newspapers large and small, in
conjunction with partners such as ProQuest and Heritage, who've joined
in this initiative. One of our partners, the Quebec Chronicle-
Telegraph, is actually the oldest newspaper in North America=97history
buffs, take note: it has been publishing continuously for more than
244 years.

You=92ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching
the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after
searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content,
but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or
[Titanic located]. Stories we've scanned under this initiative will
appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the
New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked
"Google News Archive." Over time, as we scan more articles and our
index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main
search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching
the full text of these newspapers as well.

This effort is just the beginning. As we work with more and more
publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those
billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable,
discoverable, and accessible online.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Manager