As print magazine circulation drops in the face of an economic downturn — and as more magazines and newspapers roll out online-only publications — Google is indexing old magazines.
Google on Tuesday took another step in its mission to index the world’s information, releasing digital copies of more than one million articles from magazines that were on the newsstand decades ago. The announcement follows a recent move to index classic photos from Life magazine.
“Since Daniel Defoe published the world’s first English magazine back in 1704, millions of magazines catering to nearly every imaginable taste have been created and consumed, passed from person to person in cafes, barber shops, libraries and homes around the world,” Google software engineer Dave Foulser wrote on the company blog.
A Look Back in Time
Google is partnering with publishers to put a sampling of the diverse mix of magazines online. The plan is to digitize millions of articles from titles such as New York magazine, Popular Mechanics, Ebony, Popular Science, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and more.
“If you’re wondering what cars people drove in the eighties or what was in fashion 30 years ago, there’s a good chance that you’ll find that answer in a magazine. Yet few magazine archives are currently available online,” Foulser said.
With Google Book Search, that is changing. If you’re a baseball history fanatic, you can now search for “Hank Aaron pursuing Babe Ruth’s record.” Among the results, Google will turn up a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Aaron that was written as he closed in on Ruth’s record for career home runs.
“You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you’ll find a two-page spread on 1973’s…