SmallTownPapers, Inc. is Key Player in Google News Archive Product
Seattle, WA - September 10, 2008 - SmallTownPapers, Inc. has announced its scanned bound-book archive content appears in the newly-unveiled Google News Archive product. The Internet giant announced the new product this week with Google representative Punit Soni explaining, "we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives." SmallTownPapers' contribution to the new product comes from its multi-million pages of digital content from more than 400 separate newspaper titles from across the country.
According to Google, the company is focused on large dailies with archives held on microfilm. "While microfilm is used to archive most large daily newspapers such as those in the Google product, publishers from smaller market newspapers generally have their archives in bound volumes," said Paul Jeffko, president of SmallTownPapers.
Publishers with bound volumes who want to include their archives in the Google News Archive can work with SmallTownPapers which will scan, process and upload the archive pages directly to Google. "Our company specializes in digitizing bound book archives for publishers and making them online accessible in a number of ways including through this new Google product," said Jeffko.
Google's Punit Soni added, "This effort expands on the contribution of others who've already begun digitizing historical newspapers." SmallTownPapers has been scanning printed newspaper archives since 2000 and while somewhat daunting in concept; its logistical and scanning program has proven reliable with more than 1,000 shipments so far. The company provides industrial shipping boxes to transport the often-delicate bound volume archives. After processing, archive materials are returned to the publisher who can contribute as much content to the program as they choose.
Archive pages appearing in the Google product will contain newspaper branding, links to the main newspaper site and offer mail subscriptions. Each page also contains contextual ads from which the publisher will earn revenue. "This is an exciting opportunity for small market publishers from across the country and we are thrilled to help publishers participate in a program which gives them a new way to market and share their historical archive with the world," said Jeffko.
Users will search the historical archives by visiting Google News Archive Search or by using the timeline feature after performing a search on Google News at
http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search. Washington newspapers included in the initial release include Issaquah Press, Quad City Herald, Marysville Globe, Cheney Free Press, West Seattle Herald among others. For more information or to contact SmallTownPapers visit
www.smalltownpapers.com.
About SmallTownPapers®
SmallTownPapers is an online gateway to newspapers from small town America — past and present. Working with publishers from across the country, the company digitally scans current and archived newspapers and then provides online access. Through the SmallTownPapers website, the newspaper archives can be searched by keyword or phrase and viewed as originally printed. SmallTownPapers, Inc. is based in Seattle, WA. For more information visit
www.smalltownpapers.com.
