• The Sunday Times Digital Archive provides access to 180 years of the Sunday Times newspaper from 1822 to 2006.
  
  Coverage includes:
  - Crime
  - Theatre
  - Sport
  - Politics

Showing Alf Hallworth wearing adults hat and reading newspaper,outside front door of family home at Pepper Street, Hastings Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 807-9362

• The Daily Mail Historical Archive incorporates more than 100 years of the Daily Mail newspaper, from 1896 to 2004.
  The archive comprises advertisements, news stories, and images and coverage includes:
  - WWI and WWII  
  - Women and gender
  - Home and lifestyle
  - Crime
  - Popular politics
  - The great depression

• Gale NewsVault is a single interface enabling the cross-search of all Auckland Libraries' Gale historical newspaper archives at the same time.*
  - 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
  - 19th Century British Library Newspapers Part 1
  - 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part 2
  - 19th Century U.S. Newspapers
  - Daily Mail Historical Archive 
  - Illustrated London News Historical Archive
  - Picture Post Historical Archive
  - Sunday Times Digital Archive
  - Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
  - Times Digital Archive

The Auckland Weekly News was filled not only with news and advertisements, but with an excellent assortment of photographs, and a service it offered during the war years was to publish a passport sized photograph of your wounded or killed family member. These photographs have all been indexed in to one easy-to-use volume, although its worth noting it does not included those photographs published in the Weekly News supplement.

In case you haven't heard the big NEWS, the New Zealand Herald has been digitized up to 31 December 1945 and is now accessible through Papers Past!  The Auckland Libraries homepage currently has a direct link to the database or alternatively, Papers Past can also be found under "P" in the A-Z listing of eResources in the Digital Library.

There has never been a better time to delve into your family history research and see what newsy items about your ancestors were published in the New Zealand Herald. Best of all, the contents can be downloaded, printed or saved in a pdf format for your records. If you would like some user friendly tips on getting the most out of searching on Papers Past, check out our research guides by clicking here.

While browsing through the pages you will also discover quirky, interesting articles and bits of gossip that will undoubtedly provide you with endless hours of distraction.

New Zealand Herald, 4 March 1939

New Zealand Herald, 22 March 1941

New Zealand Herald, 13 January 1927

Papers Past now has 83 titles and over 3 million pages of digitised content available. Besides the Herald and Auckland Star, the following list of historical newspapers on Papers Past also have Auckland content:

Happy searching!

Karen

DC Thompson Family History, the company that also provides Findmypast, has launched a mobile app called Here & Then that can provide you with articles from the British Newspapers Archive.

On your iPhone, you can view "On this day" articles, humorous stories, and historic topical stories that mirror today's news - free!

If you don't have an iPhone, you can view online. But maybe eventually it will also be available on Android one day?

 Good reading!

Seonaid

Many of the customers coming to the Research Centres are aware that we hold copies of the New Zealand Herald, Auckland Star and London Times on microfilm but how many of you reading this know that we have Musical Times and Singing Class Circular (June 1844-1926) or the Weekly Graphic and Ladies Journal (31 May 1890-25 June 1913)?

We have reasonable sized runs for some of the titles held while others may only cover a few issues, months or years such as the Kawhia Settler and Raglan Advertiser (19 July 1902-18 June 1904) and The Mail (Thames) 26 March 1870.

The collection includes the following Māori titles:-

• Te Karere o nui tireni (Māori Messenger) Jan 1842-Mar 1844
• Te Karere Maori (Māori Messenger) English & Maori (two issues only)
• Te Manwhiri Tuarangi and Māori Intelligencer English & Māori (31 May 1860 only)

Many local newspaper titles are held at the Research Centres such as North Shore Times, North Harbour News, South Auckland Courier, Howick Times, Western Leader, West Weekly, East and Bays Courier and Central Leader to name a few and these are generally in “hard copy”.

Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, 4-7356

All of the titles held at Auckland Libraries can be found on our catalogue but a member of staff can assist you if you are unable to locate a particular title.

We also have a number of indexes of birth, marriage and death notices for overseas newspapers on the shelves and there are also digitised versions of newspapers available through the Digital Library section of our website; most of which you can view from home (there are only a few titles which you cannot view from home if you are not a member of the Auckland Libraries).

Do have a look as you may be surprised as to what we have in the collections.

Marie

The name Cyrus Haley won’t be familiar to many today, but back in the late 1800s, Cyrus Haley’s nefarious exploits were well documented in the print media, from his attempts at murder, his fondness for setting fires, right down to his death in 1875 while attempting to escape imprisonment.

So who was the man that caused such speculation in the media of the day?

Cyrus had emigrated from England to New Zealand with his family in 1870 and wasted little time making enemies and enacting his own form of justice. When his wife Emily’s singing performance at the Music Hall was savaged, the hall was mysteriously gutted by fire. More arsons took place and while all these couldn’t be linked to Haley, there was one involving the property of BNZ founder Thomas Russell, also director of a company in which Hailey claimed to have lost ₤3000.

While Thomas Russell himself wasn’t short of enemies, Cyrus’s grudge was so intense, he set about trying to kill him. In December of that year, Haley fired through the windows of the Russell home (the glorious Pah Homestead in Hillsborough Road, Auckland), almost killing one of Russell’s children. Haley also wrote anonymous notes threatening death to Russell.

He was caught and tried, and subsequently convicted of attempted murder, threatening to kill and threatening to destroy property - he had also set fire to hay on the Russell property. His sentence was life imprisonment in the Dunedin gaol.

Ref: Taranaki Herald, 6 October 1875, Papers Past


Haley first attempted to escape the prison in 1873, but in 1875, after receiving disturbing news about his children, he tried to flee a labour gang and was shot by a warder. The inquest following his death concluded it was “justifiable homicide.”


Ref: Taranaki Herald, 9 October 1875, Papers Past


To learn more about this fascinating and disturbed character, you need only check out the Papers Past website where all his activities and accompanying speculation were well documented.

Ref: Daily Southern Cross, 30 January 1872, Papers Past

Indeed, the Daily Southern Cross of January 30 1872 says of the man following his arrest after the Hillsborough house incident, “Various reports respecting Haley are in circulation, one of which is that he is insane, and another that he is feigning insanity. Neither report is correct. Haley's conduct in confinement is perfectly rational, and he is neither apparently nor in reality insane.”

Joanne

Prudery and prurience – resources held in the Central Auckland Research Centre


Ref: Current display in the Central Auckland Research Centre

The Research Centre has several resources regarding Truth including a microfiche copy of Rebecca Lancashire’s 1986 thesis “Prudery and prurience” which compares images of women in NZ Truth in 1935 with the “cult of domesticity”.

A second microfiche resource is the “Divorce information extracted from NZ Truth newspaper” between 1946-1966. A common reason for divorce at that time was adultery, and co-respondents are named in this record. Other reasons for divorce included desertion; living apart for seven years; or a spouse being convicted of murder.


Ref:  AWNS-19250716-52-6, "I've been married fifteen years, so I think I've well earned a divorce.", 1925, Sir George Grey Special  Collections

The collection holds three books featuring Truth – Redmer Yska’s 2010 history “The Rise and Fall of the People’s Paper”; and Lesley Verry’s 1985 “Seven Days a Week” history of Independent Newspapers Ltd.

The third book is Truth’s 1950 Cookery Book with “600 Specially Selected Prize Recipes” including those for invalids, diabetics and the health conscious.

The newspaper collection has all copies of Truth published between December 2007-2013 and local history articles in these issues have been included in Auckland Libraries digital resource Index Auckland.

Lastly, Papers Past has digitised NZ Truth from 7 July 1906-22 December 1930 and these are also available to view on Auckland Libraries digital library.

Leanne

In our Digital Library, Index Auckland is a rich resource of history, art, theatre, film and music references sourced from Auckland area newspapers and journal articles.

 
The music references provide a comprehensive overview of the musical history of New Zealand and include:

• music in Auckland scrapbooks from 1890 to 1930
• New Zealand music scrapbooks from 1960 to 1995
• music programme collection
• various journal articles, performance reviews, and newspaper clippings from the New Zealand music vertical file. The local history, biography and family history references include:
• Auckland scrapbooks 1923 to 1994
• New Zealand scrapbooks 1916 to 1975
• obituary scrapbooks 1933 to 1941 and 1949 to 1979
• pioneer women's roll of honour, Auckland province
• Maori electoral rolls for the North Island, 1919
• Auckland city area suburban newspapers, particularly from 1996.

Seonaid

Newspapers provide much more than the usual births, deaths and marriage notices, and the occasional obituary. They provide an insight into people's lives. Social history, local, national and political history - all of which add shape to the lives of your ancestors.

National Library is in the process of digitising New Zealand's heritage newspapers and has so far digitised more than two million pages, 70 publications across New Zealand, and covers the years between 1839 and 1945.

These digitised newspapers are being added to PapersPast.

People were pretty quick off the mark to discover in May, that the next batch of Auckland Star pages had been added to PapersPast. From 1870 to 1926 of the Auckland Star is now available online - more than 75 years worth, keyword searchable.

The Auckland Star is a joint project with Auckland Libraries and the National Library.

National Libraries say that PapersPast only covers a very small amount of New Zealand newspapers as yet, and that if you cannot find what you need online, you may find what you need in paper or microfilm formats at your library.

Access to heritage newspapers from round the world can be obtained by our Digital Library:-

• 19th Century US Newspapers;

• British Newspapers 1600-1900;
• Illustrated London News  
• Picture Post Historical Archive  
• The Guardian and The Observer (1791-2003) 
• The Irish Times (1859-2008)  
• The New York Times (1851-2007) 
• The Scotsman (1817-1950)  
• Times Digital Archive

And you can read more about our newspapers, both heritage and more recent.

Happy hunting

Seonaid