Google Shuts Down Newspaper Archive Project
After three years, Google announced today that it would shutter its ongoing quest to scan and archive printed newspapers. Google's News Archive, which has scanned nearly a million pages from 2,000 newspapers into an easily browsable database since 2008, was among the most ambitious attempts to record and archive newspapers in their printed form. While Journalism.net keeps a running list of digital newspaper troves around the world, the News Archive was the first major attempt to centralize digital scans of old broadsheets in a single, searchable archive....
The end of Google's News Archive won't be the end of digitized broadsheets. The New York Times, noticeably absent from the project, recently unveiled its TimesMachine engine, which allows readers to browse and read any issue of the of the Times from September 18, 1951 to December 30, 1922. But the service was an incredible resource for smaller publications which lacked the resources to undertake an extensive -- and expensive -- digitization process. Carly Carlioi, a longtime editor at the Boston alt weekly The Boston Phoenix, offers a thoughtful heartfelt eulogy for the archive:...