How to Search for Old Newspaper Articles in the Google News Archive

When I talk about search strategies in my workshops I stress the importance of getting students to utilize more than just the default Google.com search engine. One of the ways to do that is to introduce students to resources like the Google News Newspaper archive. In the Google News Newspaper archive you can search for a specific newspaper, search for article titles, or as demonstrated below you can search for a topic.


This is one of the resources that we will explore during my presentation Teaching With Technology and Primary Sources next week at #NCTIES15 in North Carolina.

Browse Hundreds of Old Newspapers in the Google News Newspaper Archive

Google Books is a great place to find books and old magazines, but if it is newspapers you're after then check out the Google News Newspaper Archive. In the archive you will find hundreds of newspapers that have been digitized for reading online. You can search for a specific newspaper by title or browse for articles by date and title.

Applications for Education
The Google News Newspaper Archive could be a great resource for history students. One of the activities that I might have students do is select a significant event like a Presidential election and compare how it was reported by newspapers in different parts of the country.

H/T to Lifehacker. 

Add Google News to Your Blog

Yesterday afternoon Google announced the release of a widget creation wizard that you can use to add Google News headlines to your blog or website. The Google News wizard makes it easy to customize the look and the content displayed on your blog. Once you have selected the news content you want displayed and the size of the display, simply copy the code generated for you and paste into your blog editor.

Applications for Education
If your curriculum calls for students to be aware of current news stories, displaying the Google News headlines on your classroom website will help students to meet expectation being knowledgeable about world news.

Displaying the Google News headlines is one way that you can attempt to make your classroom blog or district website "sticky" and keep parents and students looking at it longer.

Google Brings Old Newspapers Online

Today, Google announced on their official blog that they are undertaking a new project to digitize and make available online 200 years of newspapers. Obviously, the project will take a long time to complete, but you can see the beginnings of their work online now. Google seems to be bringing the newspapers online by focusing significant world events like Neil Armstrong's moon walk before moving on to smaller stories. Try searching for "titanic located" and you will find this copy of the St. Petersburg Times story from Saturday, August 16, 1980. So far the options are fairly limited, but eventually this will be a great resource for teachers and students.

Applications for Education
The Google News newspaper archives will eventually make more old newspapers available to teachers and students than can be found in even the best high school microfiche collections.

New Google Earth Overlay Helps Users Find News by Location

Just when you think Google Earth can't get any better, they add another useful feature. According to Google's LatLong Blog, there is now a news layer available for use with Google Earth v4.3. Select the news layer from the options menu and as you zoom in on a location, news related to that area will appear. Click on the news snippet to read the full story or find links to more related stories. Click here to read the full directions. Click here to get Google Earth version 4.3.

Applications for Education
The news layer option on Google Earth is useful for students in global studies courses. Students can use this option to quickly locate news stories for the region of the world, country, or city they're studying.