Current Activities and Progress

Recent achievements

  • Over 8 million digitised newspaper pages from over 350 newspapers are now being made accessible through Australian newspapers on Trove. These now include the five non-English language Australian newspapers.
  • Seven newspapers that were completely missing from our collections have been discovered.
  • Australian newspapers are being continually microfilmed - ensuring that they are accessible for future readers and old, unstable newspaper microfilm is being replaced with polyester film. All preservation microfilm is stored under ideal conditions for permanent access.
  • ANPlan libraries have catalogued more newspaper microform titles onto the national bibliographic database (NBD), according to the microform cataloguing guidelines developed by ANPlan libraries in 2006.
  • ANPlan libraries continue to communicate with public libraries and other community groups about how to use and contribute to digitised newspapers on Trove.
  • ANPlan libraries continue to raise awareness of libraries' role in collecting, preserving and providing access to newspapers - this has included the ongoing Search and Rescue campaign to locate missing Australian newspapers.

For further details, see Australian Newspaper Plan: preserving for permanent access Annual Report 2011/12, October 2012 on this website.

Collecting

The Search and Rescue campaign to find missing newspapers has resulted in a number of significant newspaper finds. Australia's missing and recently found newspapers are published on this website.

Digitisation

The availability of digitised newspapers has increased dramatically over the last year, largely due to mass digitisation being conducted by the National Library of Australia through the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. Five of the new titles are community language newspapers. A significant number of newspapers are being digitised through the 'contributor model.'  Titles selected for digitisation are available on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation website.

ANPlan libraries continue to explore emerging issues in the provision of permanent access to newspapers such as the collection of digital versions and the roles of digitisation and microfilming as preservation strategies.

Microfilming

Newspapers microfilmed by ANPlan libraries in 2011/12 are listed on this website:

Acetate replacement

Replacing unstable acetate microfilm with polyester film is one of the strategies which ANPlan libraries have been using to preserve access to their newspaper collections. Over the last year, a significant amount of activity has been directed towards this activity.

Storage

Most libraries report optimal environmental conditions for their printed newspapers and all libraries report being able to store their newspaper preservation master microfilm under ideal conditions for permanent access. These environmental conditions are reported in the Australian Newspaper Plan: preserving for permanent access Annual Report 2011/12, October 2012 on this website.

Cataloguing

Most hard copy Australian newspapers are accessible through the National Bibliographic Database (NBD), with detailed and up-to-date holdings information. Significant progress has been made in cataloguing newspaper microform onto the NBD according to current guidelines.

For further information about these measures, please see Australian Newspaper Plan: preserving for permanent access Annual Report 2011/12, October 2012 on this website.

Public outreach

ANPlan libraries are talking with their library networks and with the general public about digitised newspapers, missing newspapers and the libraries' role in collecting, preserving and providing access to newspapers.

Last updated: 12 January 2013