Many popular magazines are now included in Google books cover-to-cover.  One can search the whole lot, or within individual titles.  Two of the titles which might be of interest to readers of this news are Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.  The listing by title (cover) is here:

http://books.google.com/books?as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1.

Don’t expect the very latest issues!  The inclusive dates differ for each title.

Source: ResearchBuzz [tara@researchbuzz.com]