The magazine’s entire archives–complete with articles, covers, photos and video footage–will go live on the web later this week. And its all free!

On Thursday, the magazine will introduce the Vault, a free site within SI.com that contains all the words Sports Illustrated has ever published and many of the images, along with video and other material, in a searchable database.

The Vault’s search engine lets a reader search by athlete, coach, team, sport, decade and year. Want to see every Sports Illustrated cover with Magic Johnson, or all the articles that mentioned him in 1986? Easy.

The site also allows a reader to see high-resolution images of old issues of the magazine as it appeared in physical form, including ads, using a mouse to “turn” pages. Jeff Price, president of SI Digital, said, “We’re confident that there’s nothing else like this.”

This is a huge leap forward for SI, and a move that I certainly hope will inspire other mags and newspapers with an online presence (since most seem to be comfortable with their current lo-fi, text-only archives).

For the sake of wishful thinking, two publications that I’d love to see implement this sort of feature on their sites: Vibe and The Source. Imagine that!

In the meantime, have a look this massive archives of SI covers.

[via NY Times ]