Facing the future of Australian newspapers

Australia’s rich but relatively recent newspaper history began in the early nineteenth century with the publication of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803. Since the early 1990s, the National Library of Australia has collaborated with the six Australian state and territory libraries under the Australian Newspaper Plan (ANPlan) to ensure that the nation’s newspapers are collected and preserved for permanent access. As technologies have evolved and the way news is produced and disseminated has undergone rapid change, the strategies which ANPlan libraries have chosen to achieve this aim have also altered. The paper will discuss the current work relating to the collecting, preservation and digitisation of newspapers by the National Library in collaboration with state and territory libraries, and the various issues encountered.