Google News Archives
The Best of the Best
Google (big surprise!) heads the list with its wonderful Google News Archive Search.
I suspect even a lot of folks who are familiar with Google News (which covers the past few weeks of news items) may not know about the full depth of resources available at their News Archives. The files here go back to the 1700's. By combining results from numerous, deep, independent archives -- and allowing searches to occur at Google speed -- this is usually the first place I stop for any broad-based historical searching.
Search results can be one big list, or can be sorted into a Timeline, so you can quickly access all the stories from, say, the 1850's. And of course, the Advanced Search functions allow you to fine tune the results even further.
Google News Archives provides content from dozens of different sources, which is both a strength and a weakness. Clicking on a particular search result may lead you to the full article, or it may just lead you to a log-in page, telling you how much it costs to access the article text.
Multiple sources also make for a mixed bag of results...there's a fair amount of chaff mixed in with the wheat, if you catch my meaning. After a while, you get a bit familiar with the quality of the sources, and learn to start ignoring the ones that need ignoring.
Google isn't the only game in town, however. There are plenty more archives out there, as you can see on the next page.
There's more on the next page!
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