How to find current, historical and online newspapers
You can find a full listing of all current and historic electronic newspapers under the A-Z databases page. Below are some of the highlights. The most comprehensive listing of newspapers is on our catalogue- just enter the title you are looking for and select 'journal or newspaper titles' from the drop down option.
Canberra Times up to 1986 is available on Trove, as well as seven other ACT titles.
Newspapers on microfilm. Includes Canberra Times from 1926. Onsite access only. Interstate newspapers on microfilm are kept in storage and can be ordered daily.
The Sydney Morning Herald is mostly all available online.
1842-1954 is on Trove
1955-1995 (Feb) is on the Sydney Morning Herald Archive
1986-current Access Australia 2021 - mostly text only. Full-image format available for recent major newspapers.
1996 Aug 1: Proquest Newsstream (articles only; not classifieds, BDMs or images)
1996-2006: for full text/ images use SLV microfilm
2006- today: Sydney Morning Herald Digital Editions
The current three months of the hard copy is available in the Newspapers and Family History and Reading Rooms (NFHRR)
Tim Sherratt has developed a map which pinpoints newspaper titles that have been digitized on Trove. It's very handy to see what areas and time periods have been covered across Australia.
Some newspapers have been 'tagged' by registered users of the State Library of Victoria. Others have been given subject descriptions by librarians. Keyword searches can be made for various types of newspapers which have been given subject descriptions. See for example 'Turkish Newspapers'. Some popular user tags for foreign language newspapers are listed below. See User Tags for more information about tags.
Some User Tags for foreign language newspapers are:
Foreign Language Newspapers
Chinese Language Newspapers
German Language Newspapers
Greek Language Newspapers
Italian Language Newspapers
French Language Newspapers
Vietnamese Language Newspapers
Turkish Language Newspapers
The Australian is the first local newspaper to launch a regularly updated Chinese-language website — translating reports into Mandarin for local Chinese readers.
Newspaper circulation in Australia, 1932-1977 provides figures and tables covering newspaper ownership, market shares, circulation and prices for all of Australia, spanning 1933-1976.
Australia's press: control and circulation, 1974-75 includes capital city newspaper and magazine circulation, a listing of who owns which publications and a table of advertising expenditure.
You can find lots of information about Australian newspapers through the work of the Australian Newspaper History Group. You can view the some of the results of their research online including:
In these resources, you can find out more about newspapers and their staff over the decades.
Two hundred years of Sydney newspapers : a short history/ Victor Isaacs and Rod Kirkpatrick
This digitised booklet offers an overview of the history of Sydney newspapers and includes circulation comparisons, timelines and an extensive bibliography.
Use the News articles search in catalogue to find results across millions of news articles from hundreds of newspapers. Text only, no pictures or ads. To find articles in popular Australian newspapers, combine one or more of the ISSNs below with your search terms:
| Newspaper | ISSN |
|---|---|
| The Advertiser (Adelaide) (1996— ) | 1039-4192 |
| The Age (Melbourne) (1991— ) | 0312-6307 |
| The Australian Financial Review (2003— ) | 0404-2018 |
| The Australian (1996— ) | 1038-8761 |
| The Courier Mail (Brisbane) (2001— ) | 1322-5235 |
| The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) (2001— ) | 1836-0203 |
| Herald Sun (Melbourne) (2001— ) | 1038-3433 |
| The Mercury (Hobart) (2001— ) | 1039-9992 |
| The Sydney Morning Herald (2001— ) | 0312-6315 |
| To find: | Type in: |
| articles about AFL in The Age | 0312-6307 AFL |
| articles about AFL in two or more papers | (0312-6307 OR 1038-3433) AFL |
The content is uploaded weekly so for the most recent articles on a topic, it's best to go to the individual database. For more search tips and information about using our catalogue, please visit the Using our catalogue help pages.
