Newspapers in our collections are available in paper, microfilm and digital formats. Many are available in more than one format.
Search for newspapers
You can find out what newspapers we hold by searching the National Library Catalogue.
Find articles in newspapers using Index New Zealand
You can search for articles in New Zealand newspapers by using indexes and abstracts on the Index New Zealand website. The website does not provide full text versions of the articles but will help you locate material relevant to your research.
National Newspaper Collection
The National Newspaper Collection on the lower ground floor of the Library contains historical and recent issues of:
- all major metropolitan newspapers and regional papers from New Zealand
- selected community newspapers (particularly from Wellington), and
- some early Australian and English newspapers.
Pacific newspapers in the collection include all current newspapers published in Pacific Island languages and many Māori niupepa.
Microfilm copies of many newspapers can be borrowed by interloan through your local library.
Digital copies of selected niupepa from the collection are also available online at the New Zealand Digital Library website.
Niupepa Māori online – New Zealand Digital Library website
More about the National Newspaper Collection
Papers Past - early New Zealand newspapers online
Papers Past is an online collection of digitised pages from newspapers New Zealand-wide, published from 1839 to 1915. Over one million pages from more than 40 newspapers in the National Newspaper Collection are freely available online.
General Serials Collection
The General Serials Collection contains New Zealand and Pacific newspapers published in the past 12 months. You can get copies of articles from the newspapers by interloan though your local library.
More about the General Serials Collection
New Zealand and Pacific Collection
The New Zealand and Pacific Collection is a reference collection of a wide variety of publications about New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. A number of Pacific newspapers published in the past two weeks are available in the ground floor reading room of the Library.
More about the New Zealand and Pacific Collection
General Reference Collection
The New York Times (1993 to current) and Times (1995 to current) newspapers are available on CD-ROM from the General Reference Collection. The CD-ROMs are on open shelves on the ground floor, and are for use in the Library.
More about the General Reference Collection
Newspapers in other institutions
Historical newspapers tend to be scarce. There are typically only one or two sets in existence for most titles, and these are distributed across many organisations.
To find out where historical newspapers are held, check the Union list of newspapers preserved in libraries, newspaper offices, local authority offices and museums, by D R Harvey, 1987.
Other libraries throughout New Zealand contain collections of current newspapers. Find New Zealand library websites using Te Puna Web Directory.
