Well; since they let the cat out of the bag.....
They will be searchable when they are made available. Once they are in digital format it's fairly easy to do.
You will be pleasantly surprised when they are made available. I am not going to speak as to what the plan is but it will not be prohibitive as you think.
Are you familiar with how The Sporting News archives are available? If so; think about THN being done in a very similar way.
Hockey World, Hockey Pictorial & Inside Hockey (minus 1 issues) have also been digitized and provided to THN. I know the guy who did them pretty well
Not sure if the plan is to make them available as well. I think some discussion would need to be had in regards to those. The THN yearbooks have also been digitized as well.
This same person who digitized Pictorial & World has also done Hockey Illustrated, Hockey Digest, Action Sports Hockey, Blueline and many other magazines. The goal is to make them available but without the help of someone and the concern of copyright issues not sure if it will happen or not. I just know this person I speak of
has put a lot of time & effort in digitizing over 2,000 magazines. They have now moved on to Hockey Guides and are currently working on them.