Saving Newspapers
Hilary Berthon and Patricia Crampin looking at an early edition of the North Australian
Patricia Crampin viewing an historic issue of the Advertiser online
Newspapers are a valued and popular part of Australian libraries’ collections. Their social and political commentary, stories about local characters, pictures and photographs, information about births, deaths, marriages, arrivals, departures, pardons and resettlements and reference to the prevailing economic conditions make them unique and important records of our history. Even the advertisements they carry can be revealing of the times in which they were created.
The National Library of Australia has been working with the Australian state and territory libraries to save these rich documentary sources through the provision of payments to support newspaper microfilming projects. When this cooperative newspaper microfilming program ceases in June 2010, the Library will have provided around $2 million to state and territory libraries to preserve permanent access to Australian newspapers chosen for filming because they may be fragile, in heavy demand or otherwise ‘at risk’. This funding program is part of the Australian Newspaper Plan, an ambitious program of the national, state and territory libraries to collect, preserve and provide access to all Australian newspapers.
Newspapers are inherently fragile, often crumbling to dust over time. While storing newspapers in a controlled cool environment can significantly lengthen their lifetime, microfilm, with a life expectancy of 500 years, offers a suitable medium for preserving the content of newspapers in the long term. When newspapers are copied to microfilm, a first generation ‘camera’ or ‘preservation master’ is produced. This is kept in cold storage to ensure its longevity. A second generation ‘printing master’ and then user copies are produced to enable access. The funding which the Library has provided is to reformat newspapers onto microfilm in this way, so that they are preserved for future readers.
Over the years that the cooperative newspaper microfilming program has operated, many important regional or country newspapers have been filmed. Sometimes these papers represent the only newspaper circulating in the area at the time. These then become a vital source of information for researchers studying the history and events of a town or district and for genealogists. In their original format, these newspapers are often fragile and brittle. Newspapers from other language groups which document the life and concerns of specific cultures within the Australian community and those, such as the University of Queensland’s student newspaper, Semper Floreat, that offer a window into the culture and the interests of particular sections of the community, are also of interest.
Cooperative newspaper microfilming funding has enabled newspapers from all Australian states and territories to be microfilmed. The Northern Territory Times and Government Gazette, published between 1873 and 1932, was initially printed on a press brought to Darwin on the Gothenburg by a young Adelaide journalist. Its rival, the North Australian, published in Darwin in the 1880s, presented news with a significantly different slant, but was later amalgamated with the Northern Territory Times. The Northern Standard, published by the North Australian Workers’ Union, commenced publication in 1921, with early mastheads carrying the line: ‘peace, progress, patriotism, freedom, fraternity, fair play’. With the outbreak of the Second World War and the influx of troops into Darwin, the Army News was born and became the only newspaper to be published in Darwin after the city was bombed in February 1942, ceasing publication in 1946, shortly before the Northern Standard resumed publication (see online reference). These newspapers, and the post-war news publication produced for the Alice Springs area, the Centralian Advocate have all been filmed, or partially filmed under the cooperative newspaper microfilming program, preserving a unique account of Northern Territory history.
Newspapers documenting sporting history are highly sought after—the Winner, the first issue of which was published one week before the commencement of the First World War, covered Victorian, national and international sporting events throughout the period of the war. Featuring topical and sporting cartoons and photographs, it also traces the early career of billiards champion Walter Lindrum and continues to attract a variety of readers and researchers. All surviving issues of the Winner are available on microfilm. Western Australia’s Weekly Judge (published throughout the 1920s) and Umpire (from the turn of the century), both sporting newspapers, have been included in the program.
Decades of the South Australian Advertiser have been microfilmed as part of the program and are now being made available through the National Library’s newspapers service. This newspaper claims two firsts—to be the first newspaper in the state to use motor cars in conveying news reports in 1902; and then in 1933 to fly Melbourne Cup photographs to Adelaide overnight to be printed the following morning (see online reference).
The phenomenal success of the Library’s newspapers service is evident, not only in the rapid rise in the number of people accessing the digitised newspapers, but also in the activity of those who are assisting to make the text more reliable by contributing their ‘corrections’. While optical character recognition software has enabled word searches to be carried out on the scanned newspaper text, improvements to over 8 million lines of newspaper text by users have enhanced the accuracy of the text and its ‘searchability’.
Because of their fragile format, Australian libraries have needed to work hard at the task of saving newspapers. The Library’s cooperative newspaper microfilming program has played an important role in ensuring that a remarkable portion of Australian documentary heritage has been preserved for future generations.
Hilary Berthon
Australian Newspaper Plan Coordinator



