ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 61 | February 2003
Australian Newspapers Online
Australian Newspapers Online (ANOL) <www.nla.gov.au/npapers/> is a new and easy-to-use portal to Australian newspapers which includes metropolitan dailies, regional and suburban online newspapers, as well as those with only promotional sites.
Six years ago the National Library was developing portals in a variety of subject areas. About that time newspapers began to have a presence on the Internet with limited content or promotional material. Originally the list contained less than 30 titles. Today there are well over 400 links to Australian online newspapers and the list continues to grow. The initial web site worked well for the limited entries but the addition of more and more newspapers made the site very cumbersome. The site proved to be one of the most visited of all the National Library sites, only surpassed by the Librarys home page. For the six months June to November 2002, the site averaged over 30 000 visits per month.
Web statistics show many of the hits came from people connecting directly to the newspaper site without going through the home page. The indication is that the site is being bookmarked by users coming in directly from search engines.
Australian Newspapers Online provides a variety of search options. Newspapers can be selected alphabetically by name, by town of publication, by state of publication or by clicking on a map of Australia for state newspapers. Value added features include a number of relevant links to meet users additional requirements for newspaper related material. Links include Ask Us, the various means of contacting reference staff; the National Librarys Newspaper catalogue; Worldwide Online Newspaper links; Media links; OzLife Biography Index; our Document Delivery Service and a dialogue search box for Australian Journals Online.
Newspapers from the Australian Periodical Publications 18401845 Cooperative Digitisation Project <www.nla.gov.au/ferg/>, have been included with links to their full text displays.
The new look page was added to the Web in November 2002 and averaged
over 4100 visits per day during that month. The National Library of Australia
encourages other libraries to include the Australian Newspapers Online link on
their web sites. Additions or corrections can be emailed to <npapers@nla.gov.au>.
Paul
Livingston
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