Google to put newspaper archives online
If you’ve ever tried to look up a news article written before 1996, it’s as though those events never happened — my few articles from prior to the Web exploding onto the scene posted here are my only early articles online … for now.
Following in the footsteps of its earlier moves to digitize book content (but hopefully avoiding some of the missteps that attracted the ire of some publishers and authors), Google is digitizing older newspapers and putting them online. The goal, of course, is yet more content they can put ads alongside, although some newspapers are looking forward to selling people reprints of classic issues.
Although Google is starting with the largest newspapers, the company says it plans to reprint smaller newspapers as well, and is working with microfilm companies to accomplish that.
I don’t know if we’ll ever see my old work from the News Messenger or Dear Newspapers online (and I’m not entirely sure if I want to see all those articles again — I had a bumpy first few years as a writer and as a reporter), but I can certainly see the value to an informed citizenry whose digital memory, at the moment, only extends back a maximum of 13 years.
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Speaking of institutional forgetting, my employer deletes our email after two MONTHS, and most of the firm certainly lacks the general know-how or will to archive to get around it. Even my division CEO has said in front of me “if it really matters, they’ll email again”
Comment by Joel — September 13, 2008 @ 8:49
Of course there is a downside to all of this – stories that you have successfully left in the past can now find their way back home to you…
Comment by Jonathan — September 13, 2008 @ 9:03