Google started its newspaper archiving effort with two papers -- The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Now, it has announced via the Official Google Blog that it's expanding the project and scanning all issues from dozens more newspapers.
This effort will enable us to help you find an even greater range of material from newspapers large and small, in conjunction with partners such as ProQuest and Heritage, who've joined in this initiative...You'll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]. Stories we've scanned under this initiative will appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked "Google News Archive." Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.
According to the announcement, users will be able to see stories as they originally appeared. I'm not sure if seeing scanned images will be an option -- i.e. if users will also be able to choose to see stories in plain type -- or whether it will be the only way to view archived materials. Given how Google book search works, I guess it's going to be an option.
This phase of the project doesn't seek to archive every newspaper story ever published, but that is Google stated objective. It's nice to know that the company that's putting us newspapers out of business will at least preserve our memory.
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