Papers Past
Online New Zealand newspaper archive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Papers Past is a website run by the National Library of New Zealand that provides free access to digitised newspapers, magazines, journals, letters, diaries, and parliamentary papers from the 19th and 20th centuries. It has over 9.4 million pages as of 2026.
- English
- Māori
| Available in |
|
|---|---|
| Founded | 2001 |
| Country of origin | New Zealand |
| Created by | National Library of New Zealand |
| URL | paperspast |
History
Papers Past was launched in August 2001[1] with 20 publications and about 300,000 pages.[2] Users initally had to install a Java applet to view the contents, and were unable to search through the collection by text.[2][3] In 2007 a new Papers Past website was launched, which used the digital library platform Greenstone, developed by the University of Waikato. The new website used optical character recognition to scan the contents of the pages to allow users to search through them.[3] Not all titles became searchable after this update—it took until 2009 for this to happen.[4] The Papers Past website was redesigned in 2016.[5] In 2024 a correctable text feature was added, allowing users to correct errors in the automatically scanned text.[6]
In 2014 Papers Past included an estimated 3.3 million digitised pages.[7] As of 2026[update], Papers Past has 9,403,907 pages, including over 8.3 million newspaper pages, 560,000 pages of magazines and journals, 300,000 parliamentary paper pages, 100,000 book pages and 23,000 pages of diaries.[8]
Usage
Papers Past is run by the National Library of New Zealand and provides free access to digitised newspapers, magazines, journals, letters, diaries, and parliamentary papers from the 19th and 20th centuries.[9] In 2020 Papers Past had approximately 30 million page views. As of 2021 most users of Papers Past are genealogists, but other people who use the website include lawyers and students.[10]
Timeline of digitisation
In about 2015, over 120,000 pages, comprising 18 different Māori periodicals, were added to Papers Past.[11]
In 2015 it was announced that several newspapers from Central Otago and Queenstown would be added to Papers Past, including the Alexandra Herald, Cromwell Argus, Dunstan Times and Lake County Mail.[12]
In 2019, issues of the Forest & Bird magazine from the 1920s to 1940s were added to Papers Past.[13]
In 2021 it was agreed that editions of The Press up to 1995 would be added to Papers Past. Papers Past already had The Press articles from between 1861 and 1945.[10]
In September 2024 it was announced that issues of the New Zealand Listener magazine from 1939 to 2018 would be added to Papers Past and so would the New Zealand Woman's Weekly.[14]
In May 2025 Marlborough Express newspapers from 1929 to 1952 were added to Papers Past. Bound collections of the newspapers were delivered to Wellington by car and ferry for digitisation.[15]