The Way-Back Machine
The New York Times is reporting that Google has introduced a new search engine that allows a person to search through many different newspaper archives at once. I tried it out this morning and could barely drag myself away to go to breakfast at the hotel where I'm staying.
I searched on my own name and discovered, in addition to my Patriot-News articles, several articles that mentioned me in my hometown newspaper, the Holland (Mich.) Evening Sentinel. Cub Scout awards and promotions, my appearance with the Holland High School team in High School Quiz Bowl, a local TV show, and a number of other highlights of my young life. My parents and uncles and aunts appeared in other articles. Definitely fun.
Most of the articles must be purchased to be read in full, but the prices aren't too bad. My only complaint is that there isn's a single place to pay for access. Some articles are from Newspaper Archive and others from ProQuest or other sources. So depending on what you're looking for, you'll have to buy subscriptions from more than one provider.
Google News Archive will be of particular benefit to historians, opening up some of the vast amount of information that lies in old newspapers in large and small towns. Most of this was effectively inaccessible before. In theory you could search the microfilms day by day for what you were looking for, but I can testify that this is an exhausting and tedious process. Most American newspapers, other than the New York Times, didn't bother with full indexing or any indexing of their back issues. Which was a shame, because it is true that newspapers are the first draft of history.