Google To Archive 244 Years Of Newspaper Articles Online

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. is trying to expand the newspaper section of its online library to include billions of articles published during the past 244 years, hoping the added attraction will lure even more traffic to its leading Internet search engine.

The project announced Monday extends Google's crusade to make digital copies of content created before the Internet's advent, so the information can become more accessible and, ultimately, Google can make more money from ads shown on its Web site.

As part of the latest initiative, Google will foot the bill to copy the archives of any newspaper publisher willing to permit the stories to be shown for free on Google's Web site. The participating publishers will receive an unspecified portion of the revenue generated from the ads displayed next to the stories.

Google is touting the program as a way to give people an easier way to find a rich vein of history. The initiative also is designed to provide a financial boost to newspaper publishers as they try to offset declining revenue from print editions that are losing readers and advertisers to online news sources.

"I believe this could be a turning point for the industry," said Pierre Little, publisher of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which touts itself as North America's oldest newspaper, with editions dating to 1764. "This helps us unlock a bit of an asset that had just been sitting within the organization."

Besides the Chronicle-Telegraph, other newspapers that have already agreed to allow Google to copy and host their archives include the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Google declined to specify how many other papers have signed up or how much the company has budgeted for the project.

Google already has committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to make electronic copies of books and other material kept in dozens of libraries around the world. The book-copying program, launched in 2004, has triggered a lawsuit from group of authors and publishers that alleges it infringes on copyrights _ a charge that Google is fighting.

Major newspapers including The New York Times and The Washington Post began to give Google's search engine access to some of their electronic archives in 2006. But those results frequently displayed only news snippets. Readers often had to pay a fee to see the entire article.

Besides being free, the newspaper archives hosted by Google will be presented in the same way they originally appeared in print, said Adam Smith, Google's product management director.

Finding the old newspaper stories initially will require searching through Google's "news" or "news archive" section. The newspaper archives should start showing up on Google's main results page within the next year, Smith said.

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On The Net:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch

Comments

[Sofar]

I think that the American people have been bamboszaled, they have been hooddwiked, played for
a fool. We are supposed to pay for bailing out the fat cats. They just keep getting richer and we the people keep getting poorer. I just don't undersand how the people can keep going for these failed
ideas, over and over again. Why are we so trusting when it comes to the bumbs we vote into office.
They use the jobs to grab all the money they can and then leave office. Taking other jobs and leaving the people worse off then when they came office. And it dosent matter what office the occupy. They all get rich. Something is very wrong about this system.

[lvdragonlady]

p.s. - I hope the database will include associated pictures to the articles.

[lvdragonlady]

I think this is an awesome idea. I do have one suggestion, make sure you include the obits also.

Good Idea

[anfractuous]

To all those posters breathlessly intent on tracing their family trees; Just face it, somewhere along the way, something went horribly wrong.

[OhioJan]

Thanx Google! Now, maybe I can get some info on my elusive family tree! That would be GREAT!!!

[3reddogs]

Whilst researching my family tree a couple years back I was absolutely astounded to have online access to articles from the Hornellsville (New York) Tribune dating back to the 1870's, where I found several references to my great-grandfather and the hotel he was a proprietor of. ("The hotel, kept by Mr. Xxxxxxx, who is a model of a landlord, sets an excellent table and provides nobly for the horse. In short the hotel at Rexville is a first-class place to stop at ...."). I had to pay genealogy.com to get the links to these references but the thrill I got seeing my great grandfather's name in print (and seeing his name on an 1860 handwritten census form) was worth every penny. How fantastic that google is willing to foot the bill for a project that will allow all of us to see what life was like back when newspapers were about the only form of communication. (As for me, I'm just relieved and pleasantly surprised that great-grandad was running a hotel and not a brothel :-)

[larry278]

The geneology bit is interesting. I may find out what kind of wood was used for the rails which were used when one of my relatives was driven out of a town tarred & feathered tied to a rail. I won't have to search the police blotters & court records to find my relatives who had trouble with the law; I can just google it up.

[devinsbuddy]

That's just what I need! I'm behind in my reading now!

[spacemonkeymafia]

This will also be a treasure chest for genealogy research. As I've tried to trace my family history for the last few years, I can't tell you how many times I thought, "man, I wish I had electronic search capability on old newspapers". I couldn't believe that in the 21st century, I still had to have microfilm newspapers mailed to my local library, and then manually search each page for references to the information I was seeking.

Thank you Google!

[BLinCincinnati]

This is good news for me. As someone who has researched my family tree back into the 1500's on many lines this could provide some really valuable context and storyline to those families. Part of my family hear in Cincinnati has been here since the mid 1700's before Cincinnati was even founded, so I've found quite a few articles mentioning them. A few were involved in the police dept, fire dept, and a few helped found a local church. This type of online resource will really help out a lot because searching through endless reels of microfilm is a pain to say the least.

[mishte]

Wow. What a treasure of a resource.

...um...th­at is if it is impervious to cherrypickers who excise articles from the past they don't care for.

It can be so darn frustrating to do even marginally adequate research on the web - at least as a non-credentialed, non-insider average jane citizen.

I view the internet primarily as an infinite library - which is beyond thrilling. But it takes on shades of a banana republic in the stacks. But I can't do without it. Ever.

I can't wait until this project is realized..­. priceless.

[exmate]

I love google.

[RobinSeattle]

As somebody who has a history degree, this is fanfreakingtastic.

Nice job Google!

[geneven]

I recently spent quite a bit of time reading issues of the NY Times from somewhere around 1845, and it was exciting to read that someone named Jefferson Davis was at a political convention.

Newspaper articles reveal history in a day-to-day fashion that histories usually can't match. I can easily imagine being a high school student (or younger) and becoming immersed in the past and in touch with history in a way that most of us can hardly imagine today. This will change the world.

[mayhem4masses]

Google knows what they are doing, they are the number 2 most visited website in the world next to Yahoo, and just ahead of youtube, according to the most recent alexa.com rank. It will be interesting to read something from the 1800's.

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[DaOne]

....but none from Wasilla, Alaska