More Google, more history

The online world is barely getting over the fact that Google released a web browser when word comes of further Google developments that offer good news for fans of the past.

The official Google Blog has a post about a new initiative to "digitize millions of pages" of newspapers and introduce them into search results. The provided example comes from the Pittsburgh Post's coverage of the moon landing; Gaustronaughts will be pleased to know you could have celebrated with Lobster.

The entire news archive is searchable through Google's Archive interface and provides the ability to produce graphical timelines.

I'm excited by the release of this service, not least because I've spent some time (it's on there somewhere - scroll to number 99) thinking about the dissemination of archaeological information via the printed newspaper. The expansion of this newspaper service to all countries within which Google operates will allow for a unique examination of the popular view of archaeology. How many people will be Googling the papers for "Oxford Archaeology"? More importantly, we will be able to see how more controversial issues are reported in various parts of the World and by different groups of people.

The potential of this service seems enormous, and whilst online publication and dissemination of archaeological material may be a hot topic at the moment, it could potentially be dwarfed by archaeology disseminated in the papers; the potential public audience of tabloid archaeology is, after all, larger than the number of people keen to read grey literature reports.

Moving away from Archaeology, I'm having a hard time getting my head around the shear volume of material there must be potentially online and the impact that it will have on anyone interested in almost any topic of the last 200 years. Very interesting Times.