Elephind was a specialized search engine that made exploring historical newspapers effortless. Rather than having to visit individual archive websites, it provided free access to digitized newspaper collections from around the world in one convenient location. The platform was powered and hosted by Veridian Software.
Veridian operates an extensive network of newspaper archives, including numerous US state collections and several international databases spanning countries like Estonia, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, the original Elephind website closed in mid-October 2023 when Veridian determined that hosting and maintenance costs had become unsustainable. While the newspaper content remains available through Veridian’s website at
https://veridiansoftware.com/collections/, it lacks the streamlined search functionality that made Elephind so valuable.
The good news is that Elephind 2.0 is currently being developed by Veridian. The beta version is available at
https://beta.elephind.com/ and offers free searching capabilities, though the final release will operate on a subscription model with limited complimentary searches. To stay updated on the official launch, you can register for notifications at
https://elephind.com or follow their Facebook page at https://facebook.com/Elephind.
Submitted by Robin McCarthy (with paraphrasing by Claude.ai)
