wedothatinidaho posted back in May about digitizing Idaho newspapers. Now Google has announced a project to digitize millions of newspapers. They are starting with larger newspapers, so it will probably be a long time before they look at Idaho (keep up the good work wedothatinidaho!).

I can remember a specific research question I had – news related. I was hoping it would be in a local newspaper from 10 years ago. I had to travel to ISU and spend a lot of time going through several rolls of microfilm, ultimately not finding what I wanted. My hope is that the google project will make it easier to pin down specific keyword searches so that it takes less time and is more relevant. Other Google projects like the patent search and the book search are both good examples of the power of google to digitize things for the masses.

I hope this announcement will energize, reinvigorate, and build on the many smaller digitizing projects around the country.