200 Years Of Newspapers

[LocktownDog]

Google announced that they are putting as much historical newspaper content onto digitally-searched microfiche as they possibly can. No more sitting at the library archives and flipping through those little films? This could be interesting.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspaper.html

 

[Cricket]

Being in the newspaper business, I am very excited about this. I would spend hours browsing old papers. This could get addictive!

 

[Ace Fedora]

It's a great idea, but I wonder if there might be some conflict with newspaperarchive.com -- a site that offers old newspapers in PDF format, but charges a subscription fee. If the Google scans are of comparable quality, NA will be NG.

I've been considering a subscription, but if Google gets to my local papers within a year or so, it's not worth it.

 

[Fletch]

Hopefully someone at Google has read Nicholson Baker's book The Double Fold, which is all about the corporate-driven mass trashing of newspapers in favor of microforms...which long ago effectively reduced the non-mediated past to one edition per paper per day.

No extra! No extra! Don't read all about it!

 

[Lefty]

I love Google. With Google Books, Patents, and now Newspapers, they're helping to make good on the promise of the web being an information super highway, not just an infinite volume of fragmented information.

 

[Fletch]

And Google proposes to allow access to this vast storehouse of old news for free????

I can see and hear my late grandfather - small-town newspaperman, moralist, and skinflint - shaking his bald half-hornrim-spectacled head vigorously from side to side and muttering with increasing vehemence: "They've got to pay!...Dammit, they've GOT to PAY!!"

 

[StraightEight]

Thank heavens Google is posting old newspapers online. Now we'll have something to read to replace the current newspapers that are dying off.

 

[Lefty]

I guess it depends upon who owns the rights to those old papers. Most of my searches now yield old NY Times articles that will run me about $4 each.

And Google proposes to allow access to this vast storehouse of old news for free????

I can see and hear my late grandfather - small-town newspaperman, moralist, and skinflint - shaking his bald half-hornrim-spectacled head vigorously from side to side and muttering with increasing vehemence: "They've got to pay!...Dammit, they've GOT to PAY!!"