Rifling history’s secrets

By Margaret Parkes on behalf of the Warkworth Branch of the NZ Society of Genealogists.

There has been much discussion about the future of newspapers as we have known them. Many people now read them online and as technology such as the iPad become more common this is likely to increase.

However, it is the newspapers of the past which are of interest to genealogists and historians. The old New Zealand papers have been preserved for many years by the National Library and have been microfilmed and available for reading at libraries where there are special film readers.

Now these papers can be viewed free of charge online at the website of Papers Past. There are more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The collection covers the years 1839 to 1932 and includes 58 publications from all regions of New Zealand and more are being added all the time.

It is possible to search by date, region or title and a computer-generated text copy is available. However this OCR process does not necessarily produce accurate data as it depends on the print quality of the original newspaper and its condition at the time of microfilming.

Members of the NZ Society of Genealogists also have online access to a large number of overseas newspapers and periodicals. These include hundreds of US 19th Century newspapers, 200 years of the London Times, the Illustrated London News from 1842, 19th Century UK periodicals and so on.

Imagine reading about the activities of your family 100 (or more) years ago – court cases, sports events, prizes at the local show, school results and business advertisements. Sometimes it has been possible to confirm family stories such as the one about a family member ‘disappearing’. It was reported in the paper. Another ancestor was found to have been in hospital with an injured arm and amputation of the fingers and a check of the newspaper showed that he had had an accident at work, giving all the details. A court case for ‘cattle rustling’ in West Auckland was a surprise ‘find’, which provided a few more unanswered questions.

The website can be found at paperspast.natlib.govt.nz