MyHeritage today announced the launch of OldNews.com, a new website providing access to thousands of historic newspapers, primarily from the 1800s and 1900s. This website features articles from major international newspapers to small town magazines and gazettes. Its search engine allows you to quickly find information about people, topics, and events. OldNews is a $99 annual subscription-based service that offers a 7-day free trial.
This website allows genealogists, educators, researchers, and history buffs to find articles about historical figures and events. With OldNews, you can discover stories about your ancestors and gain deeper insight into different moments in history. Browse headline news, birth and wedding announcements, obituaries, sports and culture, lifestyle news, ads and more. MyHeritage adds millions more newspaper pages every month.
At launch, the website includes newspapers from publishers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia. The company says it adds millions of newspaper pages every month and plans to add content from even more countries in the future. OldNews is available in 11 languages, including English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
News content was processed using optical character recognition (OCR) technology and enhanced with algorithms developed in-house by MyHeritage.
“Our team has explored the world, working with libraries and archives to bring together the best of world history,” MyHeritage's European content director Myko Celleland said in an emailed statement. mentioned in. “Following our digitization process, we applied a new, state-of-the-art, proprietary optical character recognition and AI language modeling process to our printed materials. This allows us to search and match OldNews using names, dates, locations and keywords. We now have a dedicated, accurate, and best-in-class text database.”
When you search for a person or topic, the website displays enlarged thumbnail images of articles that highlight the terms in your search results. If you choose to view the entire article, the term will remain highlighted. You can print the document or download it to your computer. MyHeritage plans to release additional viewing features in the coming months, including the ability to save and share newspaper clippings.
MyHeritage notes that because previously you didn't have to be famous to be in a newspaper, anyone could be in a newspaper, which makes historical newspapers valuable to genealogists, historians, and educators. I'm pointing it out. They are also valuable to the general public. For example, you can try searching for a grandparent's or great-grandparent's marriage report using their name and year of marriage.
“Historic newspapers contain a wealth of information and provide an unparalleled level of detail about the past,” MyHeritage CEO and founder Gilad Japhet said in a press release. “We're launching OldNews.com to serve as a hub for historic newspapers offering powerful content. This release is just the beginning. We're excited about additional content and features. We have pipelines and ambitious plans to make OldNews.com the number one online repository for historical newspapers beyond the English-speaking world and internationally.”
The launch of the new website comes at a time when we have seen news organizations shut down, their content removed from their websites and access to thousands of news articles and features from recent decades removed. I was disappointed. Given the importance of preserving news content, launching OldNews is a great way to celebrate journalism while providing easy access to important historical accounts.