08 September 2008

Google: Digitizing historical newspapers

Reuters reported on Google's digitization of old newspapers here.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has stepped up efforts to digitize dozens of historical newspapers and make scanned images of the original papers available online, the Internet search leader said on Monday.

In a blog post on the Silicon Valley-based company's website, Google said it is looking to make old newspapers searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.

The effort involves the archives of dozens of newspaper titles and expands on a two-year-old effort by Google to work with two major U.S. newspapers -- The New York Times and Washington Post -- to index old papers in Google News Archive.

"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all," Google product manager Punit Soni said in the blog post.

The new papers range from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "the first newspaper West of the Alleghenies" (the Allegheny Mountains), to the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has continuously published for 244 years, making it North America's oldest lasting paper.

Initial project partners - ProQuest and Heritage - are in the US and Canada. Click the link above for the complete story.

The original Google blog link is here, and stated:

This effort is just the beginning. As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online.


For more on the Google/Proquest partnership, check out Randy Seaver's posting here and Dick Eastman's posting here. For the New York Times article, click here.

I'm looking forward to the day when enterprising sites will scan, digitize and place online collections of Ladino and Judeo-Farsi newspapers.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, my name is Carlos Pio Staiti, live in Long Island, New York, I just find your article on internet very interesting.
    For the last 15 years Iam involve in tracing my family history in Sicily.
    Few years ago I got a article about Jews in Sicily by Proff. Giuseppe Martino, and after that I have look into Jewish heritage and I find out that my family were Jews prior to the 1492 inquisition.
    On December 2007 I was ask to present a very short comment about my research at the "Hollocaust Museum" in Glen Cove Long Islad and in November I will speak about my family marrano's history at Midway Jewish Center.
    I like to know, if would you allowed me to advertise your expertise on researching Jewish heritage at my speech.
    Thank you very much,....
    Carlos P. Staiti
    47 Whitman Ave.
    Syosset NY 11791
    (516) 921 1901

    ReplyDelete