St. Petersburg Times index archive

Google has made great progress on digitizing microfilm issues of newspapers, such as the St. Petersburg Times and St. Petersburg Evening Independent.

You can access a search portal at:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search?hl=en

In the source box, just enter the name of the newspaper (i.e., “St. Petersburg Times” or “Evening Independent”). You will get a search results screen.

It’s not perfect: There are still gaps and the software they have used to scan entries has not been proofed in its entirety. For example, the scan might think it sees “081tuary “instead of “obituary.” You cannot save images (unless you’re a little crafty with Firefox and are willing to save in many small pieces), and this does not mean we should cancel our microfilm for the Times, but it is a nice alternative source that (as of now, at least) is free.