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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.
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22armadillo+aerospace%22&scoring=t
Fuck I wish Carmack would stop using his Time Machine to get 1957 publicity.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Now, all those guys/girls who streaked during Woodstock are going to repent (more).
But seriously...
1. Guy/girl does something goofy in 70s as a teenager.
2. Gets covered by local news (at that time).
3. Google digitises that news.
4. Now CEO (then guy/girl) is suddenly let go.
Who hasn't done something goofy and thought in retrospect wished they hadn't done it (not necessarily something criminal). Google might make their "second chance" disappear.
ps. Carly F. might have seen this coming ;-)
I welcome this news. For too long, research on the Internet has been a frustrating task. For any events after about 1997, there's oodles of information. However there's a giant hole in the amount of information available for events before then. Google Books went some way towards addressing this, but it was still an intense task because a lot of the time, you still have to find and buy the books (or find them in a Library).
I really hope they plan to go as far as putting local, regional newspapers online as well.
At last, something that looks really GOOD, from Google! With free access, this will really change the world, even more.
History revisionists will find it even more difficult to dupe.
Maybe there are serious drawbacks, but, for the time I cannot see anything but the positive aspects.
I hope to god that they edit out the advertising otherwise all us consumers will be frantic with longing for products that are no longer available, what with advertising not being a huge sham and all!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
My thirty-year, $50-billion plan to consolidate the microfiche market may well be in the shitter.
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 :)
Guy/girl does something goofy in 70s as a teenager. Gets covered by local news (at that time).
I've seen that already. I looked up an executive, and Google returned a hit from a student newspaper from the 1960s that they'd digitized from microfilm. The story mentioned the guy being a member of the Socialist Workers Alliance.
Oh no! Exec dabbled with left wing ideology in youth! By the way I was a member of the Socialist Worker Student Society when I was a student because I was trying to impress a girl. Why would anybody care?
The people that freak me out are Young Conservatives. Those guys are creepy.
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.
Oh no! Exec dabbled with left wing ideology in youth! By the way I was a member of the Socialist Worker Student Society when I was a student because I was trying to impress a girl. Why would anybody care?
I can see why this would be harmful to his career. As soon as word got out that, at some point in his past, he actually cared about people, his reputation as a business executive would be ruined. He might never get another six-figure salaried job again.
and we are all going to regret it. Remember the public library system? Or the archival organizations? A bunch of highly trained people with literally centuries of experience in classifying and cataloging information, preserving the originals and investing heavily in digitization to help with that task and to make them more accessible? Most of their services are free or at a minimal cost, especially for students and researchers. And completely ad-free (at least here in Europe). Sure, their marketing sucks, they do not have the latest Web x.0 gimmicks. The tend to be a bit stuffier, old fashioned and not as flashy as our bubble heroes of the "do no evil" (but don't do anyting good either) kind, but then they on average tend to think in decades and not in quarterly results. Data (even massive amounts of it) is not information and Google is not a research tool. Google will always tweak search results towards higher advertising revenues. It is at best a brute force instrument with a vey low signal to noise ratio. It is a pest because it leads people to believe that keyword search is a solid method for research and it adds to the funding problems for libraries because who needs a library, when you can "google" everything. Google sucks up all it can get and leaves behind a desert without structure, significance or context, Support and use your local (national) library, while you still have it.
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.