[Web4lib] Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search

[Jonathan Rochkind]

How can we and Google make this work with our link resolvers to direct 
patrons to content we already pay for, like Google Scholar does?

A big problem is that our databases most likely to contain newspaper 
content do not work that well with link resolver linking (not 
neccesarily allowing article level linking). But at least it would 
notify the user that they could get the content for free. Is the user 
willing to pay $5 to avoid dealing with our bad interfaces? Possibly.

Another problem is that public libraries probably don't have link 
resolvers right now. I think they soon will need to.

A final potential problem is that Google's publisher partners may not be 
happy about Google directing users away from their revenue stream, and 
Google may not be willing to make them unhappy in this way.

Jonathan

Leslie Johnston wrote:
> It got even worse as I explored more.  Even materials dating to the 
> 1850s-1890s were restricted by subscription or pay-per-view.
>
> I tried a Washington Post article from 1894 from my search results. We 
> subscribe to ProQuest Historical Newspapers, including the Washington 
> Post. But the links in the Google search results took me through 
> something called ProQuest Archiver (I guess this is ProQuest's 
> management of newspaper archives for them), which redirected me to the 
> Washington Post archive where I was asked to pony up $3.95. So I 
> searched ProQuest Historical Newspapers and came up with the same 
> article, free to me because it is covered by our subscription.
>
> So, it's an interesting discovery tool, but unrelated to our licensed 
> resources and expensive to use if you have to pay for almost 
> everything you find.
>
> Leslie
>
> At 03:17 PM 9/6/2006, Schlosser,  Melanie Brynn wrote:
>> I found the same thing.  I was excited to be able to search on 
>> historical events and read about them as they were perceived at the 
>> time. When I did a search, however, (on the Johnstown flood - don't 
>> ask me why, it just came to mind) I found that the only freely 
>> available articles were ones published in the last few years. Since 
>> no one writes about the flood much anymore, I didn't end up with any 
>> relevant hits. I still think it's a great feature if you're seriously 
>> researching something and are willing to pay for articles. As far as 
>> casual browsing goes, however, it's a little disappointing.
>>
>> Melanie Schlosser
>> Indiana University
>>
>> Quoting Leslie Johnston <johnston at virginia.edu>:
>>
>>>
>>>> Google's new News Archive Search lets you search back over twenty
>>>> decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not
>>>> previously available via the search engine.
>>>>
>>>> "The goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore
>>>> how history unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, Google distinguished
>>>> engineer, who played a major role in shepherding the new product.
>>>>
>>>> Google has partnered with news organizations including Time, The
>>>> Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Guardian and the
>>>> Washington Post, and aggregators including Factiva, LexisNexis,
>>>> Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research, to index the full-text of
>>>> content going back 200 years.
>>>>
>>>> Archived news results can be found in three ways. You can search the
>>>> news archives directly through a new
>>>> <http://news.google.com/archivesearch/>News Archive Search page.
>>>> News archive results are also returned when you search on Google
>>>> News or do a general Google web search and your query has relevant
>>>> historical news results.
>>>>
>>>> Both free and fee-based content is included in Archive Search, with
>>>> content from both publishers and aggregators. Search results
>>>> available for a fee are labeled "pay-per-view" or with a specific
>>>> price indicated. Google does not host this content; clicking on a
>>>> link for fee-based content takes you to the content owner or
>>>> aggregator's web site where you must complete the transaction before
>>>> gaining access to the content.
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3623345
>>>
>>> By far, the lion's share of what I found was for-fee or restricted by
>>> subscription, not free.
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------
>>> Leslie Johnston
>>> Head, Digital Access Services
>>> University of Virginia Library
>>> http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/
>>> http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/das/
>>> johnston at virginia.edu _______________________________________________
>>> Web4lib mailing list
>>> Web4lib at webjunction.org
>>> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Web4lib mailing list
>> Web4lib at webjunction.org
>> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>
> ------------
> Leslie Johnston
> Head, Digital Access Services
> University of Virginia Library
> http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/
> http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/das/
> johnston at virginia.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind, MLIS
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind at jhu.edu