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Trove newspapers: data dashboard¶

Trove's collection of digitised newspapers is always changing – new articles and newspapers are being added by the NLA, while Trove users are busy correcting OCRd text and adding tags and comments. The search you run today might produce different results than the same query did a month ago, a year ago, or ten years ago. Researchers need to understand how these changes affect the queries they make, the results they find, and the arguments they construct. This dashboard helps researchers understand the context of their queries by presenting a snapshot of Trove's digitised newspapers, based on weekly data harvests. It shows Trove's current make up from a number of angles, as well as highlighting recent changes. It is updated every Sunday.

  • Total articles and user activity
  • Total articles by publication year
  • Total articles by publication year and state
  • Article categories
  • Newspaper titles
  • Total articles by publication state
  • Significant events
Last updated: Sunday, 19 March 2023

Total articles and user activity¶

Latest data harvest 19 March 2023
First data harvest 24 April 2022
Total harvests 48
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_activity.csv

As of 19 March 2023 there are 236,828,585 digitised newspaper articles in Trove.

  Current total Change since 12 Mar 2023 Change since 19 Feb 2023 Change since 24 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
All articles 236,828,585 29,926 67,746 2,316,495 100.00%
Articles with corrections 14,646,230 17,333 66,150 790,691 6.18%
Articles with tags 4,683,984 5,097 19,357 280,990 1.98%
Articles with comments 259,460 436 1,789 20,769 0.11%

Total articles by publication year¶

Latest data harvest 19 March 2023
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 44
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_year.csv

This chart shows the total number of digitised newspaper articles by year of publication. The distribution will change over time as digitisation priorities shift and more newspapers are added. This chart is useful in understanding how digitisation priorities and copyright restraints have shaped the total newspaper corpus.


Total articles by publication year and state¶

Latest data harvest 19 March 2023
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 44
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_year_and_state.csv

This interactive chart helps you explore the distribution of articles by both publication year and state. Click on a state in the bar chart or legend to filter the results by year. Click anywhere in the background of the chart to reset. This enables you to compare digitisation patterns in different states and see how they contribute to the whole corpus.

Total articles added since 05 Mar 2023 by publication year and state

This chart shows the total number of digitised newspaper articles added since the previous harvest by year and place of publication. It's useful in seeing how search results from particular time periods and locations might be affected by current digitisation priorities.

Total articles added since 19 Apr 2022 by publication year and state

This chart shows the total number of digitised newspaper articles added since the first harvest by year and place of publication. It's useful in seeing how search results from particular time periods or locations might be affected by recent digitisation priorities.


Article categories¶

Latest data harvest 19 March 2023
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 49
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_category.csv
  Current total Change since 12 Mar 2023 Change since 19 Feb 2023 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
Advertising 44,191,107 7,775 17,327 689,400 18.660%
Article 164,270,507 17,535 44,090 1,478,047 69.363%
Arts And Culture 4,226 21 83 856 0.002%
Classified Advertisements And Notices 1,476 4 10 53 0.001%
Commerce And Business 4,548 38 150 1,552 0.002%
Detailed Lists, Results, Guides 26,420,158 4,226 5,007 168,197 11.156%
Display Advertisement 489 2 2 25 0.000%
Editorial 16,240 51 219 2,833 0.007%
Family Notices 1,958,640 442 1,523 23,837 0.827%
Humour 30,550 46 180 3,042 0.013%
Law, Courts, And Crime 10,787 54 113 1,324 0.005%
Letters 13,161 18 63 1,151 0.006%
Literature 35,714 9 51 752 0.015%
News 12,224 50 134 1,806 0.005%
Obituaries 13,015 77 224 1,882 0.005%
Official Appointments And Notices 1,111 2 7 46 0.000%
Puzzles 47,444 115 432 7,512 0.020%
Reviews 2,276 13 33 295 0.001%
Shipping Notices 2,558 3 19 753 0.001%
Sport And Games 18,562 62 213 4,022 0.008%
Weather 13,688 86 454 4,331 0.006%

Newspaper titles¶

Latest data harvest 19 March 2023
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 46
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_newspaper.csv

As of 19 March 2023 there are 1,742 different newspapers in Trove.

Total newspapers 1,742
Earliest publication date 05 March 1803
Latest publication date 09 December 2021

Newspapers by state of publication¶

This chart shows the place of publication of newspaper titles in Trove.

Changes in the number of newspapers by state of publication¶

  Current total Change since 05 Mar 2023 Change since 05 Feb 2023 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 8 0 0 0 0.44%
International 13 0 0 0 0.72%
National 9 0 0 4 0.50%
New South Wales 536 0 0 21 29.68%
Northern Territory 8 0 0 0 0.44%
Queensland 106 0 0 2 5.87%
South Australia 154 0 0 0 8.53%
Tasmania 115 0 0 0 6.37%
Victoria 413 1 1 6 22.87%
Western Australia 379 0 0 29 20.99%

Newspapers added since 05 Mar 2023

title_id title state total link
1828 Myrtleford Times and Ovens Valley Advertiser (Vic. : 1930 - 1955) Victoria 28513.000000 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1828

Newspapers added since 05 Feb 2023

title_id title state total link
1828 Myrtleford Times and Ovens Valley Advertiser (Vic. : 1930 - 1955) Victoria 28513.000000 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1828

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 05 Mar 2023

title_id title change in articles link
326 Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth, Vic. : 1855 - 1955) 1,413 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title326

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 05 Feb 2023

title_id title change in articles link
316 Gippsland Mercury (Sale, Vic. : 1871 - 1894; 1914 - 1918) 36,859 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title316
326 Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth, Vic. : 1855 - 1955) 1,413 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title326
1813 The Pastoral Times (South Deniliquin, NSW : 1866 - 1895) 28,203 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1813

Total articles by publication state¶

Data about the number of articles by publication place (state) is available both from the main result API using the state facet, and from the newspaper API. As noted under Significant events, these totals don't always agree. I've included both below, so you can compare.

Number of articles by state of publication (via result API)¶

Number of articles by state of publication (via newspaper API)¶

Changes in the number of articles by state of publication (via result API)¶

  Current total Change since 05 Mar 2023 Change since 29 Jan 2023 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.392%
International 854,022 0 0 2,842 0.361%
National 657,326 0 0 204,582 0.278%
New South Wales 82,393,653 0 58,582 -506,020 34.790%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.173%
Queensland 41,128,577 0 0 38,641 17.366%
South Australia 24,810,497 0 0 247,642 10.476%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.693%
Victoria 42,174,081 29,926 67,865 1,911,186 17.808%
Western Australia 25,247,083 0 0 557,281 10.660%

Changes in the number of articles by state of publication (via newspaper API)¶

  Current total Change since 05 Mar 2023 Change since 29 Jan 2023 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.392%
International 854,022 0 0 0 0.361%
National 663,996 0 0 211,837 0.280%
New South Wales 82,393,653 0 28,203 459,996 34.790%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.173%
Queensland 41,128,577 0 0 38,641 17.366%
South Australia 24,810,497 0 0 249,718 10.476%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.693%
Victoria 42,173,120 29,926 66,785 630,065 17.807%
Western Australia 25,247,083 0 0 877,721 10.660%

Significant events¶

While the changes documented here generally reflect the addition of new articles and newspapers, the total numbers can also be affected by system configuration and optimisation events, such as rebuilding the index. It's difficult to highlight these sorts of anomalies in the charts above, but where I notice them I'll add a note here.

31 May 2022 – reindex?¶

Between the harvests on 29 May and 5 June 2022 there was a dramatic change in the distribution of articles by state (using the state facet). The number of articles from NSW decreased by 939,065, and the number of articles from Victoria increased by 961,387. There were also some smaller changes affecting other states. There was a scheduled maintenance window on 31 May, which makes me think that these reflect changes in the underlying search index, rather than the actual number of articles. Further evidence for this is the fact that the number of articles per state calculated by using the newspaper API endpoint were out-of-sync with the article totals until the end of May. Since then, both sets of article totals have remained in sync. So, in short, the number of articles returned by the state facet between 19 April 2022 (when my harvests started) and 31 May 2022 can't be trusted.


Created by Tim Sherratt for the GLAM Workbench. Support this project by becoming a GitHub sponsor.