The early issues of Auckland Star and Rodney Times are now online, thanks to a collaboration between the National Library of New Zealand and Auckland Libraries.

Digitised, browseable and fully searchable, the first 33 years of the Auckland Star, and 44 years of the Rodney Times can now be read online on the National Library’s Papers Past website.

The Star was first published as the Evening Star in 1870, becoming the Auckland Star in 1887. It ran until 1991 and lives on today as part of Sunday Star-Times’ masthead. The full text of the issues from 1870 to 1903 can now be easily accessed online.

There is also a wealth of information – shipping notices; advertisements for popular products; court proceedings; and listings of births, deaths, and marriages – for academics, casual browsers and family history researchers.

In 1901, the weekly Rodney and Otamatea Times, a four-page broadsheet, was printed on one of the first stone litho flat-bed press machines developed by Furnival & Co. Two casual workers shared the job of turning the large wheel by hand while the printer fed sheets of newsprint into the rollers.

The newspaper, published on Fridays, sold for three pennies a copy, and the annual subscription was eight shillings. This paper was renamed several times over the years, including a period as the Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, and most recently as the Rodney Gazette. You can now view issues from March 1901 to December 1945 online.

“The release of the early years of the Auckland Star and Rodney Times is a great example of National Library working in cooperation with Auckland Libraries, which holds the physical copies of the paper, and Fairfax Media, which holds the copyright, to make an invaluable historical resource available to New Zealanders at the touch of a button,” said National Librarian, Bill Macnaught.

“This release means that almost two million pages of digitised historic New Zealand newspapers are available on Papers Past. The success of this website has been phenomenal, with annual page views now in excess of 100 million.”

Allison Dobbie, Manager Libraries and Information, Auckland Council, is equally enthusiastic about the collaborative project.

“Auckland Libraries is committed to helping New Zealanders and researchers from around the world to access our past. Working with partners in this way helps to make this possible.”

“While the experience of the originals is irreplaceable, the value of digitised copies lie in the ease of searching and accessing the wealth of stories in these treasures for people everywhere.”