Slashdot Mirror
Google To Digitize Millions of Old Newspaper Pages
hhavensteincw writes "On Monday Google detailed new plans to digitize millions of newspaper pages with articles, photographs, and headlines intact so they can be accessed and searched online. 'Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written,' Google said in a blog post. 'It's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.' For example, Google noted the availability of an original article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1969 about the landing on the moon." When you search the news archive for, e.g., "Chicago fire" or "Rosenberg trial," a significant fraction of the result pages cost money to view.
Have you tried the wayback machine? http://www.archive.org/index.php
You can already access the archives of The Times online :
http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/
It's quite interesting to read about Marie-Antoinette's execution or Jack the Ripper's crimes, I especially like the writing style :)
Google Scholar is also date-searchable for obvious reasons. It wouldn't be too hard to implement this for regular Google going forwards, since it would only have to remember when it indexed everything. I vaguely remember when every web page had a 'last-updated' line at the bottom. You don't see that much anymore, maybe because it made people look bad.
So... just like the London Gazette has already been digitized. The difference is, the Gazette began publishing in 1665. Sod the moon landings! You can read the front-line reports about the American Revolution.
Bullshit. You get more action at peace rallies. Liberal chicks are easy.
And the post-coital "I voted for George W" reveal is awesome.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.