Missing Newspapers

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HELP FIND WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S MISSING NEWSPAPERS

The State Library of Western Australia is part of a campaign spearheaded by the National Library of Australia, in partnership with all the State Libraries, to find Australia’s missing newspapers. There have been thousands of newspapers published in Australia since 1788 and many, but not all, are held by the national or state libraries.

The State Library, as at June 2007, held 877 Western Australian newspapers in its collections, over 200 of which are current. These range from early hand-written manuscript newspapers from the first years of the colony’s existence before the introduction of a printing press, to today’s newspapers. However, not all newspapers are complete. Often there are missing pages or issues and sometimes whole weeks, months or even years are not held.

Information about all Western Australia’s newspapers can be found in the State Library catalogue. The catalogue record will usually indicate which issues are missing. In some cases, however, the record will simply state that the holdings are incomplete.

If you find a missing issue (or issues) we would like to hear from you. Indeed, if you find any old newspapers at all, please consider donating them to the State Library, as we can check them against our holdings to see if they are missing (in some cases it may only be a single page). Please contact the State Library (08 9427 3111). By helping us to find and add missing pages or issues you can contribute to filling the gaps in Western Australia’s collection of newspapers.

Missing Titles

There also are some newspapers the State Library of Western Australia never received. Recently a staff member found an article in a 1928 edition of The Truth (a Western Australian newspaper which ran from 1903-1931) about a newspaper called the Mustard News. This particular newspaper is not in our collections.

For many years newspaper titles were registered with the Supreme Court of Western Australia. A check of the list of titles registered with the Supreme Court has revealed that there are more newspapers on the list that the State Library does not hold. 

It may be that some of these newspapers were registered but never published, or were registered, but only ran for a few issues before ceasing, or were registered and then absorbed into other newspapers. It is also possible that some are actually magazines, rather than newspapers. If you ever find any of the newspapers noted on our list of missing newspapers, please contact the State Library (08 9427 3111), so we can discuss how you can help us to add the newspapers or copies of them to our collections.