Google Adds Magazines to its Book Search

Given my longstanding support for Google’s efforts to create a digital archive of book and newspaper content, it should surprise nobody that I am positively oriented toward the company’s recent announcement that it will henceforth include print magazines in its ambitious effort to preserve pre-web content for future generations.

Although I had a great deal of trouble myself today trying to explore this new feature, a close journalist friend has informed me that, “when you type in keywords, now magazine articles show up with book quotes.  I personally think it’s brilliant they do not differentiate between books and magazines…Very handy for journalists, in any case.”

One vexing aspect of magazines, historically, is that most of them do not last all that long.

Except for the top-level titles, magazines tend to come and go with the times, vulnerable to changes in habits and social trends. Thinking back on my own work as a journalist, much of it appeared in magazines that no longer exist. Will Google collect all of this out-of-print content and include it in the digital preservation of print media?

I hope so, not just for selfish reasons. Anyone aware of the intellectual influences that affected the 1960s, for example, would like to be able to access a searchable database of Ramparts magazine (a title I never appeared in). Going back to the muckraking period of American history, some of the most powerful journalism in our country’s history appeared in magazine titles that have long since stopped publishing.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Google’s magazine project to see whether it will eventually include all of this “lost content.” I’d recommend that the company hire a journalism historian to oversee the collection of suitable material, because this particular informational vein, though rich in value, may require the skills of an informational archeologist to recover.