Google Newspapers Archives is a free website from Google that has a large collection of scanned old newspapers. Google has scanned thousands of old newspapers and has made them available via this website. Some of the newspaper archives on this website date back to 1800s. You can click on any newspaper and read the scanned copy of it. It comes with easy zoom and pan options to read scanned newspapers easily.
Google had been scanning lots of newspapers to make them readable as well as indexable. However, in 2011, Google stopped scanning them. Many attribute it to the fact that newspaper publishers actually make money by selling old archives of newspapers; while Google was providing them for free.
Nevertheless, whatever Google was able to scan before that, can be accessed via this website. Reading old newspapers on this website is a good journey down the memory lane.
The user interface is refreshing and visually appealing. Although archive search is no longer available within Google News, you can use Google Web Search to find the content that you’re looking for.
On the main news archive page, you’ll find hundreds of newspapers, organized by title. You can search within the paper or just check out issues from specific dates.
How to read newspapers online with Google Newspapers Archives:
For reading newspapers online, just click on the title of the newspaper you wish to read. That’s it. It’s very simple.
Let’s look at an example with screenshots:
Here, I clicked on A’tome title in Google Newspapers Archives. It shows you various dates. If you want to read newspaper of a particular date, then just click on that date. Here I clicked on date March 14, 1974. It shows me the edition of that date.
Here you can choose the date of your choice from the dates shown in the Thumbnails images. And click on a particular date. Then, it shows you the newspaper of that date.
Google News Archives does not give any option to download newspaper archives. I would have loved to see an option of PDF export that let me save a complete newspaper as a PDF. But it’s not there.
Features:
- Large collection of newspapers.
- Choose from many different titles.
- Simple user interface.
- Gives you the option to view the newspaper in Small, Medium and Large size.
- You can choose from the Day, Week, Month, Year and Decade of the Title.
Conclusion:
Google Newspaper Archive is a very useful online web application for reading a large variety of newspapers online. Do try it once to enjoy those old rusty newspapers.
