Using Google Drive to provide public access to documents
Hi, Gang. Does anyone have any experience using Google Drive to provide public access to pdf files? We want to make our both our local newspaper back issues and volumes of our local high school yearbook available via our website. Our webhost does not want these documents stored on its server, but we can store them elsewhere and provide a link to the documents from the website. We have enough space on DropBox, but the documents load very slowly and don't appear to be searchable in any way (the docuements are ocr-scanned searchable pdfs). I'm loading 150 years, a year per document, of a weekly newspaper and the entire collection is less that 100 GB, so the files are not that big. 6-700 mb on average. I am looking into Google Drive, which seems reasonably-priced, but I have no experience with it at all. i am looking to provide read-only acess to anyone connecting with the link on the website. Will my documents be searchable? Might I expect Google Drive to be faster than DropBox? Any other suggestions on how I make this dream o' mine work? Thanks in advance (a pun of sorts--or close enouogh to one-- because the local newspaper is called The Advance). Bob Bob Barringer, PhD Director The Schultz-Holmes District Library 407 S. Lane St. Blissfield, MI 49228 517-486-2858 blissfieldlibrary.org Facebook: @blisslibrary
Just to be clear: I want the dcouments to be searchable within the documents, not necessarily showing up on Google searches, although that is fine, as well. Bob Barringer, PhD Director The Schultz-Holmes District Library 407 S. Lane St. Blissfield, MI 49228 517-486-2858 blissfieldlibrary.org Facebook: @blisslibrary From: Bob Barringer via Michlib-l <michlib-l@liblists.org> To: "michlib-l"<michlib-l@liblists.org> Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:33:37 -0400 Subject: [Michlib-l] Using Google Drive to provide public access to documents Hi, Gang. Does anyone have any experience using Google Drive to provide public access to pdf files? We want to make our both our local newspaper back issues and volumes of our local high school yearbook available via our website. Our webhost does not want these documents stored on its server, but we can store them elsewhere and provide a link to the documents from the website. We have enough space on DropBox, but the documents load very slowly and don't appear to be searchable in any way (the docuements are ocr-scanned searchable pdfs). I'm loading 150 years, a year per document, of a weekly newspaper and the entire collection is less that 100 GB, so the files are not that big. 6-700 mb on average. I am looking into Google Drive, which seems reasonably-priced, but I have no experience with it at all. i am looking to provide read-only acess to anyone connecting with the link on the website. Will my documents be searchable? Might I expect Google Drive to be faster than DropBox? Any other suggestions on how I make this dream o' mine work? Thanks in advance (a pun of sorts--or close enouogh to one-- because the local newspaper is called The Advance). Bob Bob Barringer, PhD Director The Schultz-Holmes District Library 407 S. Lane St. Blissfield, MI 49228 517-486-2858 blissfieldlibrary.org Facebook: @blisslibrary _______________________________________________ Michlib-l mailing list -- mailto:michlib-l@liblists.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailto:michlib-l-leave@liblists.org
I would suggest you consult the folks at UPLink at NMU to get an idea how to do it. If you have no budget at all, I would say you can use Amazon S3 Cloud Storage as a better way to just "click on a link to view the PDF". This isn't the right use case for Dropbox nor Google Docs.
On 10/12/2026 5:33 PM EDT Bob Barringer via Michlib-l <michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
Hi, Gang.
Does anyone have any experience using Google Drive to provide public access to pdf files?
We want to make our both our local newspaper back issues and volumes of our local high school yearbook available via our website. Our webhost does not want these documents stored on its server, but we can store them elsewhere and provide a link to the documents from the website. We have enough space on DropBox, but the documents load very slowly and don't appear to be searchable in any way (the docuements are ocr-scanned searchable pdfs). I'm loading 150 years, a year per document, of a weekly newspaper and the entire collection is less that 100 GB, so the files are not that big. 6-700 mb on average.
I am looking into Google Drive, which seems reasonably-priced, but I have no experience with it at all. i am looking to provide read-only acess to anyone connecting with the link on the website. Will my documents be searchable? Might I expect Google Drive to be faster than DropBox? Any other suggestions on how I make this dream o' mine work?
Thanks in advance (a pun of sorts--or close enouogh to one-- because the local newspaper is called The Advance).
Bob
Bob Barringer, PhD Director The Schultz-Holmes District Library 407 S. Lane St. Blissfield, MI 49228 517-486-2858 blissfieldlibrary.org Facebook: @blisslibrary
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Victor Volkman