I understand the entire New York Times going back to its beginning, is now available on-line for a modest fee. Some libraries have this for their patrons free of charge and one can access it from home. The database includes advertisements and is searchable.
My question about this is _how_ did they manage to get it all on? Presumably they had some automated scanning process to read in the microfilm pages and convert them to .PDF text, but considerable human effort must have been needed to reconcile errors, deal with the random blocking of articles and ads as they appeared on a page, and the continuation of articles from one page to another. When you consider how thick the newspaper is and how long its been published, you see what a massive task that was. Also the scanning software, reading from microfilm which is pretty coarse, must have been quite sophisticated.
Anyway, I've used the on-line access and it's quite a powerful and convenient tool. Sitting at one's own PC is much easier than treking to a large library and fiddling with microfilm readers. One must locate the desired dates in an index book, and check separate books for each year. Then, one must find the proper reels of microfilm. It's a bit tricky to thread the film through the reader spools and lens. Last, one must sequentially search for the specific date and article through the reel. A bit dizzying watching it spin by.
While on the surface it would seem on-line access would surpass microfilm in every way, microfilm still has a few advantages:
1) On-line searching is very narrow. That is, if you're searching for articles on the Verrazano Bridge and you spell it wrong -- very easy to do with that word -- you're seach will come up empty. But in a hard copy index, as long as you have "Ver" you should find what you want.Further, while looking in the index book, you might see other entries of interest which you don't get in an on-line search.
2) You get the article and only the article from on-line. If viewing the microfilm, you get to see the whole newspaper of the time frame. Often there are sidebar articles which might be of related interest. You see how your article appeared in the paper -- as a page one headline or buried in the classifieds on page 90. You also see the advertisements of the day. In my research, I've often accidently stumbled articles of high interest that just happened to be in the paper in that time span.3) Sometimes there are alternative resources in the library which you don't have at home. Yes, going to a major library can be a nuisance (the ones I use have parking problems). But there are other indexes, such as the Reader's Guide to Periodicals, and other publications available only on microfilm, such as Newsweek and Business Week, that may be necessary to round out your research. The New York Times is a newspaper of record and a good resource, but it is by no means the final authority on any subject and a good researcher will check alternative sources as well.
4) Microfilm access is usually free; unless your library pays for the service, on-line research has a fee. [public replies, please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are good rationales for both microfilm and online records. What I understand about the New York Times project (and the Chicago Tribune, which began in 1847) is that many of the very old pages are done in .pdf style or something similar to .jpg , that is instead of scanning all those old articles, they are taking a _photograph_ of the page and putting that photographic image on the computer. That would seem to be an easier way of handling it. Chicago Tribune started with miicrofilm of every page of every back issue from 1871 forward; between 1847 and October, 1871 they have a scattered selection of back issues (those that were not lost in the Great Fire). By using the .pdf and-or .jpg format, reasearchers get the context of the articles and the advertisements on the pages, etc. One thing I have noticed about New York Times in recent months is how you can have all you want _at no charge_ through their several RSS feeds and news wires. I put a hundred or more articles each day on the page