Google expands historical search in old newspapers - Reuters

Google expands historical search in old newspapers - Reuters: "SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has stepped up efforts to digitize dozens of historical newspapers and make scanned images of the original papers available online, the Internet search leader ..."

(Via Google News.)

Now THIS is great! A lot of newspapers archive their stories on the net but they normally only go back a few years. Furthermore, these archives and stories bear no resemblance to the published print version.

One thing I discovered years ago back in Riverside, California was the pleasure of browsing microfilms of old newspapers from the Press and Enterprise newspapers at the library. I'd pick an event in history and look it up starting several days before. This gives a much better feel for events than we get out of history books. For instance, I looked up the great stock market crash of '29. Lots of stories about Morgan etc pumping money into the market to keep it up, then the date of the crash and then nothing. Like it didn't even happen.

Other interesting (to me) uses were to look at the ads (classified and others) which show food prices, housing costs, etc. for that date.

Being able to access these from Google is going to be great fun for some of us and a really great research tool. Thank you Google!

(Hmm did I ever mention how much I love the internet? )

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