Missing newspaper pages and issues

Attention

This guide is currently under development. For more information and discussion see the list of issues on GitHub. Comments are welcome.

This section will attempt some analysis of missing pages and issues in Trove’s newspapers. As of 11 August 2023, I’m running a very long harvest of essentially every article in Trove to try and get an idea of what’s missing. This will never be precise, but it should at least provide a baseline and point to specific titles and periods that seem to be more affected.

Here’s a quick example using the Canberra Times.

Here’s an issue that seems to have a lot of missing pages, but is actually out of order: https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-issue2584973

WA Record, has pages 2 & 3 missing from most issues from 1897 to 1915 (plus others). 5.5% of pages missing. eg https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/22979867

Similarly The Clipper (Tas), 2 & 3 missing from most issues between 1906 and 1909. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/8820909

King Island News, p5 missing from 1920s-40s https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/29646613

North Queensland Register, blocks of pages missing from multiple issues, 27% of issues have pages missing

Queensland Times has significant damage to original – missing pages and bad ocr etc will result. eg: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/13410451

The Critic, Blocks of pages missing regularly, particularly in the 1920s eg: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/23607088

“809”, # Age, some recurring patterns of missing pages

“12”, # Courier Mail – 2 pages missing on Fridays from 1951-55, not many missing elsewhere – good example of unevenness, 100 pages missing each from 1952-3

Huon Times 667, 3.7% pages missing, pages 3-4 missing in stretches 1914-1917, 1923/4.