But unlike thumbing through the bound-volume pages of the print index, TimesMachine shows you results for the search term you're seeking as well as suggesting related terms—kind of like Google but with results only tied to the index, and not to search terms inputted by others. In other words, it reveals some of the connections between topics you might not otherwise search for. This is meaningful not just because it's useful but because it is so intuitive. It's an archive search tool that acts the way you might expect an Internet tool to act. Which would sound sort of mundane if it weren't so rare in journalism and library science, two fields that have struggled to transform their archival practices and functionalities in the post-print era.

In recent years, though, the Times has been a leader—along with institutions like the Library of Congress—where other stewards of great archives have fallen short. In academia, many researchers still have to travel great distances to access remote collections. Too much valuable information remains isolated to print, unlinked to related resources and collections. Even what's digitized is often done so in formats that are practically unreadable. TimesMachine is built using the mechanics of online mapping, so that instead of making users wait for a single huge file (with teeny tiny text) to load, they can zoom in, tile-by-tile, on the section that interests them.

This latest iteration of TimesMachine also offers a glimmer into how the Times sees its work, how it categorizes its own coverage—and how that has changed over the years. A simple search can reveal a clear sense of how Times coverage might have reflected or influenced attitudes about that search term at a given time. Consider, for instance, some of these headlines related to "robots" in the 20th century:

• Robot Can't Have Soul (1929)

• The Robots Again (1930)

• Defeat of the Robots (1944)

• The Menace of the Robots (1944)

• Electronic Robots (1949)

• Unreasonable Robots (1959)

• Robots Are Coming But Slowly (1966)

• They're Not Robots, They're Cyborgs (1969)

• Revolt of the Robots (1972)

TimesMachine is, in other words, a context machine. And it's a historical record designed to be used, not just saved. The archive now delivers groupings of search terms, related articles, and plenty of clues that hint at how those topics may have been received over time. And if you really want to get crazy, you can combine this kind of TimesMachine search with a query within Chronicle, the paper's visualization tool for terms used over the course of Times history. Here's a look at incidences of "robots" in the paper since 1860:

For as comprehensive as TimesMachine is—and there's nothing else I've seen like it—the archive has its limitations. As with any search functionality, you still have to think critically about what kinds of terms to use. (Search suggestions for coverage of "women" are limited to terms like "women's wear" and "fashion, women's," but the terms "suffrage" and "woman suffrage" yield tens of thousands of search results.)