Google News Archive: Out of Orphaned Status!

Yesterday’s article at Life Hacker announced the re-launch of Google News Archive!

http://lifehacker.com/google-relaunches-its-news-archive-with-hundreds-of-old-1526918169

Based on my own tests this morning, I believe they have improved the search function. My father-in-law, Dr. Hugh Cathcart, died in Charleston in 1967. I had previously tracked down the funeral notice in The News and Courier manually. I consider myself a pretty adept Googler. Previously, no search parameters would return this article. But today, success!

For those unfamiliar with using Google News Archive, I find the easiest method is to type the following into the Google search bar:

site:google.com/newspapers “[Your Search Term]” (for my test, site:google.com/newspapers “Cathcart”)

And did I mention the dozens of additonal articles returned in this search that never appeared before? Excuse me while I do my Genealogy Happy Dance!

New and Improved?

Ok, back to reality. Questions remain. Will Google add new content? I don’t know. Will Google improve how they list papers? Doesn’t look like it. They re-launched with the same Paper Name alphabetization scheme of the old site. No location information has been added to help users focus on their state of interest. While the surname search returned 18,000+ hits, many from The News and Courier, there remains no apparent way to limit the search to a particular paper.

Still, if you interested in finding which papers are available for a state please check out the yeoman’s work done by Jose A. Munoz at Enhanced Newspaper Archives.

http://newspaperproject2012.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/42/

The Verdict

With over 30 titles available, Google News Archive has always been an important resource for South Carolina research. Genealogists with less search engine skills will continue to find the site cumbersome…if they find it at all. Still, count me in the cautiously optimistic column. This will be an improved tool in the web savvy genealogist’s tool box.

By Rorey Cathcart
The Who Hunter LLC

Copyright (c) 21 February 2014

URL for this post is: http://www.whohunter.com/google-news-archive-out-of-orphaned-status/

Citation for this post:

Rorey Cathcart, “Google News Archive: Out of Orphaned Status!” posted 21 February 2014, The Who Hunter (http://www.whohunter.com/google-news-archive-out-of-orphaned-status/ : accessed [DD Month YYYY])