• by Erik Sass , September 10, 2008

Google is pushing a new initiative to transfer the historical archives of newspapers to its growing online library of books and academic articles, reaching back to the very first print editions. A boon to history buffs, the newspaper archive project is also supposed to benefit newspaper publishers by helping them monetize vast amounts of text that are literally just gathering dust.

Some big newspaper publishers have already moved to digitize their print archives: The New York Times, for example, has scanned and made searchable articles dating back to its 1851 founding. These archives and similar collections created by The Washington Post and Time magazine are already searchable by Google users. Papers participating in the new Google project include The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and St. Petersburg Times, although any newspaper may participate.

The online search giant plans to serve search ads alongside the archived text in much the same way it does with other Web content, splitting the revenue with the newspaper publishers.

The amount of labor involved in the project is colossal: The oldest newspaper in the country, The Hartford Courant, has been publishing continuously since 1764, when it was founded as a weekly.

To sweeten the deal for newspaper publishers, Google said it will take care of the costs and technical details associated with scanning and uploading large amounts of print--much of it in antiquated fonts on fragile paper.

Google also said it will help newspapers make the content accessible through their own Web site, as The New York Times currently does. At first, however, it will only be available via Google News.

Thus, the archival project is an interesting "back-door" approach to forming partnerships with newspapers, competing with Yahoo's newspaper consortium, a partnership for sharing content and advertising revenue with hundreds of publishers.