Google Newspaper Archive
You have to hand it to Google for thinking big. The world’s most comprehensive library of (English) newspapers anyone? The NY Times reports that Google’s begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites.
This screenshot was taken from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, just after the historic moon landing, on 21 July 1969. The experience of reading a newspaper on this new service is incredible. And to think of where this is all going even more so.
In a similar vein, check out the British Library’s Turning the Pages initiative. It’s nothing short of amazing, though you’ll need a pretty decent broadband connection to see the texts in all their intricate detail. (Mac users will also need to install Adobe Shockwave, which is now finally supported on Intel Macs.)
Google Halts Newspaper Scanning Project, http://mashable.com/2011/05/20/google-news-archives-shut-down/