This is now: on Tuesday, August 16, the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel listings vanished from the Google News Archive home page. Google triggered a groundswell of historical discovery, engagement and pride. By removing barriers to historical content, Google didn’t just trigger a passing interest in local history. Aligning perfectly with the rise of social media, Google News Archive content inspired Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, Pinterest boards, and more. This wasn’t just a revelation it was a revolution. Although nobody is entirely sure why the project ended, Google News Archive delivered an incredible gift to Milwaukee: free digital access to more than a century’s worth of local newspapers. When the project abruptly ended three years later, the project had scanned over a million pages of news from over 2,000 newspapers. Historians, librarians and educators rejoiced: the future was now! It was the closest thing to time travel in human history. Anyone, anywhere, would now be able to read any edition of any newspaper ever printed. Google News Archive launched that year with ambitious plans to scan, archive and release the world’s newspapers in a single public access database. In 1993, this was mind-blowing science fiction. “Have you ever learned special things, from far away places? You will.” “Have you ever borrowed a book, thousands of miles away?” asked those visionary AT&T ads of the 1990s. At least where Milwaukee is concerned.Īs chronicled by Michail Takach at Urban Milwaukee, the paper's parent company has had its entire archive pulled down. It's an invaluable research tool, putting well over a century's worth of history at our fingers.Īnd now, it's gone. You can peruse my old posts and see how many stories were inspired by browsing through old articles. I've written extensively about my love for Google's newspaper archives.
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