Google to digitize newspaper archives

If you'll permit me to put on my historian's hat for a moment, the announcement that Google is planning a massive project to digitize the back issues of newspapers, scanning their old microfilms and making them searchable online, is very exciting.

Having spent countless hours of my own time (and now that of my research assistants) seated in front of creaky microfilm readers scanning through uncatalogued newspaper microfilm reels in the hopes of turning up material that will be relevant to my research, I'm almost giddy with excitement. Most Canadian newspapers only have digital holdings going back to the mid-1980s, and the Canadian News Index only goes back to the late 1970s. If you want to search for articles from the mid-1970s or earlier in most Canadian newspapers (the exceptions being the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, both of which charge for the privilege), it's like hunting for a needle in a haystack - no indexes, and no digital material.

If enough newspapers partner with Google on this initiative, it could revolutionize historical research - or at least make it a lot faster!

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