Historical Australian newspapers from every Australian state have been digitised, some more than others. Some of the 30 plus newspapers are the Sydney Morning Herald, from 1842 to1954, the Melbourne Argus, from 1848 to1954, Tasmania's the Mercury, from1860 to1954, the Brisbane Courier, from 1864 to1933, and the Northern Territory Times and Gazette, from 1873 to1927. Going on to About Us from the home page shows you a list of the newspapers and the years covered. You can browse these newspapers by title, search by state or click on to Advanced Search to limit your search to specific newspapers and a range of years.

Papers Past, the National Library of New Zealand's initiative, is also a work in progress and added to on a regular basis. New to the website is the Thames Star, from 1874 to 1900 (although in May they will be covering up to 1920), the Ashburton Guardian, from 1890 to 1920 (with some gaps), and the recently added colourful NZ Truth, from 1903 to 1930. The Manawatu papers are to be added this month, from1877 to 1886, as are the Waipu Church Times and Waipu Church Gazette, between them covering the years 1907 to 1920. The Lyttleton Times is to be introduced in May and issues of the Evening Post will carry on to 1920. In June the Otago Daily Times is to be launched, starting from 1861 with its period of coverage yet to be confirmed. The newspapers can be searched by title, region and year. Clicking on More search options though will allow a more specific search.

Historical newspapers are full of gems for genealogists with, for example, family notices, passenger lists, reports of accidents and lists of school prize winners.

Contributor: David Verran

We are thrilled to be able to announce the digitisation of our unique card index, known as the New Zealand Card Index and housed in the Auckland Research Centre. What is of particular interest to family historians is that this resource is available online through our website. 

The digital version of the New Zealand Card Index provides vastly improved keyword access to local history, biographical and family history references from sources such as: Auckland scrapbooks 1923 to 1994, New Zealand scrapbooks 1916 to 1975, Obituary scrapbooks 1933 to 1941 and 1949 to 1979, and the New Zealand herald, the Auckland star and Auckland area suburban newspapers before November 1996. Note that music references were at that time included in a different card index, which has now been entered onto Index Auckland.

Material was selected for inclusion in the scrapbooks because of its historical, or potentially historical, value. For the Auckland scrapbooks, this included the opening, demolition or history of any buildings, history or description of industries, suburbs, etc., new subdivisions and articles giving the origin of the name of a suburb or street. The articles selected were comprehensive rather than exhaustive. Those for the New Zealand scrapbooks were more of general historical interest regarding New Zealand as a whole. The Obituary scrapbooks covered any major obituaries from either the New Zealand herald or Auckland star, as well as some death notices which were not indexed.

The availability of microfilm reader printers from the mid 1970s allowed direct reference to issues of the New Zealand herald and the Auckland star and accordingly the various scrapbooks began to cease. The advent of Newsindex in 1979 and Index New Zealand in 1987 led to further refining of what was and wasn't indexed. Further, indexing from the non-Auckland City Council area suburban newspapers ceased from November 1989, the Auckland star ceased 31 July 1991 and increasingly the New Zealand herald left the local stories to the suburban newspapers. Nevertheless, as of November 1996 the New Zealand herald and Auckland City area suburban newspapers were still being comprehensively indexed. 

Index Auckland and the digitised New Zealand Card Index are available through the Digital library (the latter from the first quarter of the new year) on our website www.aucklandcitylibraries.com.

Links:

• Index Auckland
• New Zealand Card Index

Guest contributor: Anahera Sadler

The British Museum online photographic collection, which now includes thousands of Pacific (including Maori) images that have just been scanned as part of a long-term research project undertaken by the institution. The database is huge. From my quick search, the Pacific collection appears to be twice as large (3000+ images) than that offered on Matapihi (the NZ archived image database).

There are about 1850 Maori images (there are 11,500 on Matapihi). Many of the images are also available from NZ archives, but some of the British Museum copies are apparantly of a higher quality and there are many images that are not available here. Access to these photographs would once have been through browsing reference images over many days in a large set of ring-binders in the research library of the Museum. This is so much more user-friendly, faster and cheaper, although the larger issues of open access to indigenous images remains a tricky question!