Google digitizing old newspapers for online perusal

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Google announced Monday it is working with a growing number of newspapers to “bring history online” by digitizing archives of articles ranging from lunar landings to local obituaries.

“Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written,” Google product manager Punit Soni wrote in a blog posting at the Internet giant’s website.

“And it’s our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.”

Google is expanding a project started in 2006, when it began converting to digital format stories from newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The California firm boasts that partners include the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has been publishing for more than 244 years and is considered the oldest newspaper in North America.

People can find old articles by searching Google’s online News Archives. As the index grows, articles will be woven into results of general searches using Google.com, according to Soni.

“Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you’ll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed — photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all,” Soni wrote.