Google’s “Newspaper Archive” is the result of an ambitious yet ultimately incomplete project which kicked off in 2008 following Google’s acquisition of PaperRecord.com – the project was abandoned several years ago. However, with more than 2000 newspapers already archived from all over the World, there is still a heck of a lot of newspaper pages available for viewing.
Periods covered vary from newspaper to newspaper but there are plenty of archives spanning from the early 1800s on. For example; editions of The Sydney Morning Herald, which is of local interest to me, are available from April 1830 through to December 1989 (although incomplete):
Newspapers are listed alphabetically by name, click on a name and available editions will then be presented chronologically, decade by decade:
Click on a thumbnail to open the newspaper. Each article is expandable by headline, simply move the mouse cursor over the page and click on any items which are highlighted in blue. Or utilize the zoom-in and zoom-out buttons included in the navigation bar at top right.
It’s a shame Google abandoned this project, there are just too many holes in the archive for it to be of any real historical significance. All the archives I searched skip from decade to decade – e.g. 1910, 1920, 1930 – with nothing for the years in between. Consequently, this is not the ideal resource for those looking to research a specific event or events. For anyone who enjoys just browsing through the past though, these archives will likely keep you occupied for hours. I certainly enjoyed reviving memories of an age gone by.
Jim is the resident freeware aficionado at DCT. A computer veteran with 30+ years experience who first started writing about computers and tech back in the days when freeware was actually free. His first computer was a TRS-80 in the 1980s, he progressed through the Commodore series of computers before moving to PCs in the 1990s. Now retired (aka an old geezer), Jim retains his passion for all things tech and still enjoys building and repairing computers for a select clientele... as well as writing for DCT, of course.
