The Google News Archives - A Genealogists Dream

Now, before we get started, a word about the title.  I am calling the new Google News Archives Search, a “Genealogists Dream” because of what I expect it to become… not for what it is today.  For today, it pretty darn good.  But if Google does what it has done with many other projects, it could become one of the Genealogists preferred tools for looking up obituaries and background information about people in their tree. Personally, I found over a hundred VERY useful articles thanks to the Google News Archives Search.  In fact, it was the primary reason why I was able to track down and contact a third cousin of mine who lives in Long Island New York.  And I did it in just one night.

The Google News Archive search provides an easy way to search and explore a wide variety of historical archives that have been made available for online viewing. Although not every news publisher has content online yet, Google is moving quickly to expand the service. Genealogists can search for events, people or ideas and see how they have been described over time. In addition to searching for the most relevant articles for their query, users can also see a historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically generated timeline. This feature is great if you know the time period you are dealing with.

Existing Content (outside of Google)

For articles already in digital format through the publisher or a third party provider, Google has worked with the hosts of these archives to crawl and index their materials and make them available within the Google News Archive Search Results. When you click on one of these links, you will be brought to the publisher or third party provider’s website. In most cases, you will need an account with them or pay a fee to view the entire article, but it can still be very useful. The New York Times is an excellent example of this. Google includes the results of the New York Times’ own archives when you perform a news search. When you click on the link contain a NYT article, you are brought to the New York Times Archives website and asked to pay a fee for most of the articles. If you have relatives in the New York area, this can be an extremely useful tool and probably well worth the fee. I found an obituary and picture of my great, great grandfather’s brother, who it turns out, was a highly decorated New York City Police Officer. It cost me just $4.00 and I was able to save and print a copy of the article. Remember that third cousin I told you about?  This was his great grandfather.

The Google News Archive Partner Program (within Google)

For hosts who have not yet digitized their archives, the Google News Archive Partner Program provides a way for Google and publishers and repositories to partner together and make historical newspaper archives discoverable online. When materials aren’t easily available in digital format, Google has partnered with the copyright holder to scan and present the newspaper in a way that is full-text searchable, fast and easy to navigate.

According to Google, they are working with a number of partners using a variety of types of archival materials, based on the needs of each partner. Generally, their process involves scanning microfilm rolls, along with processing PDFs and image files provided by newspaper publishers from their archives.

When you click on a result included via the News Archive Partner Program, you will be taken to a Google-hosted page containing the article in its original context.

At this time, Google does NOT offer the ability to download or print these articles. SIGH… They do offer the ability to share search results and interesting articles using the Link to article option found on the upper-right of your screen. By clicking this link and choosing a headline, you can easily mail this result to a friend and point them to check out the piece of history you discovered in News Archive Search. Unfortunately, this does little good for the Genealogist.

One possible workaround (although maybe not legal.. please check into this yourself) is to use a screen capture tool. If the article is long, the screen capture tool will only allow you to capture the visible part, so you may have to capture it in sections and stitch it all together in a graphics program. On the PC, I use Snagit. On the Mac, I use Stitch.

Conclusion

All in all, it is a great tool in any Genealogists toolbox.  But I cannot wait to see what they do with it in the next few months.