Expanded digital access to our archives
archives up to 1995 will be digitised and made freely available for searching online under a landmark agreement with the National Library.
The library’s Papers Past website already publishes editions of The Press from 1861 to 1945 which can be searched by words, phrases and dates.
They are part of a substantial catalogue of 167 historic newspapers dating from 1839 to 1950, plus magazines, letters and Parliamentary papers.
Emerson Vandy, the National Library’s Papers Past service manager, said the lack of more recent content had become a growing frustration for users.
However, under a ‘‘highly significant’’ agreement reached this year, the service has agreed to digitise every edition of The Press up to 1995. Vandy believed researchers would ‘‘go absolutely nuts’’ for newer content.
As Papers Past approached its 20th birthday he said the trickle of emails asking for more recent archive material had become ‘‘a torrent’’.
‘‘It will scratch a long pent-up itch and I can’t wait to see it online.’’
Digitisation of The Press up to 1995 would make newspaper coverage of national and international events post World War II readily accessible to the public. Topics from the Cold War through the cultural changes of the 1950s and 60s, the revival of te reo and te ao Ma¯ori through to the Springbok tours and more would be searchable online.
Vandy said there were ‘‘no other papers on Papers Past with anywhere near that level of coverage’’.
The Papers Past site had about
30 million page views a year from about two million visitors.
Vandy said genealogists made
up the largest single group of users, but it was also a resource for a ‘‘very broad reach’’ including students, lawyers and international politicians – including in tweets from the opposing perspectives of Al Gore and Donald Trump over a 1912 newspaper item on climate change published in the Rodney Times.
Other users were especially niche such as a community of military helmet enthusiasts who linked to articles about their hobby.
The Evening Post was the first newspaper to be digitised up to 1945 and its addition ‘‘had a huge impact’’ on usage of the site, marking a turning point for the public’s ability to research New Zealand history from home.
‘‘From that period onward I noticed an upsurge in the publication of specialist historical books, reference works, and use . . . it started to feel like the barrier to this sort of research had fundamentally shifted,’’ Vandy said.
A study in 2012-13 presented to the International Federation of Library Associations found Papers Past was the world’s third most discoverable historic news resource online, after Google News and the New York Times.