Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Abandons Plan To Archive World's Newspapers

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-google-a-word-you-don't-know dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the past few years, Google's newspaper-scanning project has digitized more than 60 million pages from newspapers spanning 250 years, including such gems as the moon landing. But according to the Boston Phoenix, this ambitious effort is slated to soon be axed in favor of Google One Pass, a platform for publishers to monetize content from their own sites."

4 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. It won't exist in perpetuity at Google either by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google won't exist forever, what happens to the data then?
    They should be taking lessons from the Stanford LOCKSS project.

  2. Libraries by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    In addition to being archived by the newspaper company, most local newspapers are already archived by local libraries as microfiche/microfilm. This is often required by law, as public notices are required to be placed in newspaper, and a record of this must be kept. Important national newspapers are archived by the Library of Congress, as well as multiple other libraries, where they are also digitized.

    This is where Google got their source data to scan/upload in the first place.

  3. Re:What?!? by hedwards · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've got a feeling that this has more to do with them not being able to secure rights to the newspapers. At least for the more recent ones they would require authorization to do so from the copyright owner. I'm not sure why the older ones aren't being scanned though. Perhaps that's a matter of Google needing access and most of those papers being held by the newspapers that published them originally.

  4. Re:Short-sighted... by DerekLyons · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Newspaper articles about the 1969 Moon Landing is (was?) on microfilm in different libraries around the world -- unless every single one of them tossed it all out.

    Funny story about that... A friend of mine was studying old newspapers in the microfilm collection at his university, and found that several key issues of one paper were missing. He didn't think this would be a problem, as it was a semi-important newspaper and was thus archived at multiple libraries across the state. So off he went to the other libraries and found the same dates missing in every library. He checked a couple of out-of-state libraries... and no matter where he checked they were all missing the same issues.
     
    Turns out one company had microfilmed one libraries collection - and the others had all bought the microfilm and trashed their paper copies and nobody had ever actually verified that the microfilm represented a complete run.
     
    So, just because the "backups" are distributed is no guarantee they are complete.