20 May 2011

Google Ending Their Newspaper Digitization Project


The following is from Infodocket which quotes a source in Search Engine Land
"Google’s goal to digitize all of the world’s newspapers is ending.
Matt McGee from SEL reports that after approximately 32 months after formally being announced,Google is closing it’s newspaper digitization program.
Search Engine Land also received this statement from Google:
We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online. These have included publications like the London Advertiser in 1895, L’Ami du Lecteur at the turn of the century, and theMilwaukee Sentinel from 1910 to 1995.
Users can continue to search digitized newspapers athttp://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing.
According to McGee, about 2000 newspapers are currently listed in the newspaper directory."
Comment:  It was good while it lasted. Canadians have been particularly fortunate to have Canadian newspapers digitized by Google, especially multi-decadal collections from the Montreal Gazette and Ottawa Citizen.
Now that Google have exited the field, what next?  Whereas national libraries, sometimes with partners, in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand have moved ahead with newspaper digitization Library and Archives have made efforts that can only be described as half-hearted.
Where's the leadership?

3 comments:

Elizabeth O'Neal said...

Well that's certainly a bummer.

Ellen Thorne Morris said...

At least something in the glass, better than empty.

WJM said...

Half-hearted, eh?

That's polite.