In what will be welcome news for anyone with an interest in finding and reading information in old newspapers (either for fun or research), a vast quantity of old newspaper content will soon be available.  An article appearing in the in the New York Times,  Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives, explains that Google will begin scanning newspapers to create a digital archive.  At first, the material will be searchable only through Google Reader, but Google plans to provide publishers with the means to make the archives available on their own sites. Currently you can read newspapers that have already been digitized,  but Google will now scan, and absorb the costs of scanning, papers that have not yet been digitized.

There is much potential value for newspaper publishers in their archival collections, and some see the Google initiative as a threat. However, for others, it is a great opportunity.  In an echo of the financial considerations noted in New development in publishing: more digital titles from smaller publishers may soon be available, many small publishers could not even think of having their archives digitized until Google entered the picture.

This sounds like a great service, but I am always concerned about the viability of  a project until I see from whence the money to sustain it will come.  What’s in it for Google?  Very simple — as with their web search model, they will place advertisements alongside the search results, and share the profits with the publishers.

At least, that is the “for profit” model. But Google is not the only player on the scene.  There are also some major non-profits in the game.  The National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint venture between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress is working to make a digital archive of historically significant newspapers available for free online.

Many major newspapers already provide full text content on their websites, along with images and other multimedia.  If you are interested in reading the current edition of a major newspaper, you can use a search tool (like Google) to find its website.  However, if you are looking for back issues, you often have to pay to read them .  If you are an NYU Poly student, there is another way.  You can search the contents of thousands of major newspapers and read the full text online in our library databases.

NYU Poly databases with Newspaper content (login required):

• Business Source Elite
• Gale Group Databases
• Newspaper Source
• ProQuest