Historic newspapers offer an unrivalled window on the past, writes Jonathan Scott
We are all very fortunate these days to have so many millions of digitised historic newspaper pages at our fingertips. It wasn’t so long ago that finding a reference in a local paper involved leafing through bound copies, collections of cuttings or rolls of microfilm. The ability to search by name, date or keyword from across thousands of editions from all over the world in a matter of seconds has been as transformative for researchers as streaming is for listeners.
Newspapers have always been valuable primary and secondary sources. They can help you track not only newsworthy events, celebrations, disputes or court cases, but also life events in the birth, marriage and death notices. The kinds of details that might turn up in extended obituaries, marriage reports or stories of golden-wedding anniversaries might lead you to completely new avenues of research. And even if you don’t find anything relating to your kin, perusing editions of local papers from where they lived and worked can give you a taste of their daily lives.
WELSH NEWSPAPERS
w newspapers.library.wales This free-to-use Welsh hub has a stripped-back interface from where you can choose titles by dropdown menu or a map. You can search by just English or Welsh-language papers, narrow the period, or select to search within news stories, family notices or adverts. You can also browse images, narrowing by cartoons, graphs, illustrations, maps or photos. Clicking the latter, without any filter or search term, leads to 57,232 digitised images. And the second of these is a story about a Christmas silver wedding, from the Cambria Daily Leaderdated 27 December 1919, showing a picture of the Owens of 126 Milton Terrace. Sister site Welsh Journals works just as well, and contains popular magazines as well as academic publications: journals.library.wales.
PAPERS PAST
w paperspast.natlib.govt.nz This resource from the National Library of New Zealand offers free access to digitised newspapers, as well as some magazines, journals, letters and diaries. The database includes both New Zealand and Pacific titles, mainly dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, and you can filter search results by date range, titles and/or regions, and type of content (article, advert or illustration). The website is still expanding as well – in August the Greymouth Evening Star, New Zealand Spectator and C
