GLAM Workbench
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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, 7 January 2024

Total articles and user activity¶

Latest data harvest 07 January 2024
First data harvest 24 April 2022
Total harvests 90
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_activity.csv

As of 07 January 2024 there are 244,357,348 digitised newspaper articles in Trove.

  Current total Change since 31 Dec 2023 Change since 10 Dec 2023 Change since 24 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
All articles 244,357,348 308,457 1,182,750 9,845,258 100.00%
Articles with corrections 15,365,816 16,464 68,262 1,510,277 6.29%
Articles with tags 4,869,070 3,726 16,701 466,076 1.99%
Articles with comments 274,196 328 1,043 35,505 0.11%

Total articles by publication year¶

Latest data harvest 07 January 2024
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 86
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 07 January 2024
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 86
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 31 Dec 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 07 January 2024
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 91
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_category.csv
  Current total Change since 31 Dec 2023 Change since 10 Dec 2023 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
Advertising 45,758,359 51,241 228,095 2,256,652 18.726%
Article 169,441,173 228,782 843,451 6,648,713 69.342%
Arts And Culture 4,544 1 4 1,174 0.002%
Classified Advertisements And Notices 1,642 0 1 219 0.001%
Commerce And Business 5,624 8 23 2,628 0.002%
Detailed Lists, Results, Guides 27,172,878 27,802 107,242 920,917 11.120%
Display Advertisement 500 0 0 36 0.000%
Editorial 17,907 3 18 4,500 0.007%
Family Notices 1,998,787 675 4,123 63,984 0.818%
Humour 34,977 53 137 7,469 0.014%
Law, Courts, And Crime 13,497 14 89 4,034 0.006%
Letters 14,238 10 182 2,228 0.006%
Literature 37,612 4 856 2,650 0.015%
News 15,682 14 111 5,264 0.006%
Obituaries 15,659 43 270 4,526 0.006%
Official Appointments And Notices 1,245 1 2 180 0.001%
Puzzles 51,328 4 5 11,396 0.021%
Reviews 3,231 0 12 1,250 0.001%
Shipping Notices 3,188 7 17 1,383 0.001%
Sport And Games 20,393 0 9 5,853 0.008%
Weather 17,081 1 6 7,724 0.007%

Newspaper titles¶

Latest data harvest 07 January 2024
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 88
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_newspaper.csv

As of 07 January 2024 there are 1,792 different newspapers in Trove.

Total newspapers 1,792
Earliest publication date 05 March 1803
Latest publication date 19 December 2022

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 31 Dec 2023 Change since 10 Dec 2023 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 8 0 0 0 0.42%
International 13 0 0 0 0.69%
National 9 0 0 4 0.48%
New South Wales 552 0 1 37 29.21%
Northern Territory 8 0 0 0 0.42%
Queensland 107 0 0 3 5.66%
South Australia 158 0 1 4 8.36%
Tasmania 115 0 0 0 6.08%
Victoria 440 0 0 33 23.28%
Western Australia 382 0 0 32 20.21%

Newspapers added since 31 Dec 2023

  • No newspapers added in this period.

Newspapers added since 10 Dec 2023

title_id title state total link
1874 The People's Weekly (Moonta, SA: 1890 - 1926) South Australia 74161.000000 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1874

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 31 Dec 2023

title_id title change in articles link
1191 The Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954; 1956) 182,678 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1191
1852 Daily Mirror (Sydney, NSW : 1941 - 1955) 125,779 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1852

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 10 Dec 2023

title_id title change in articles link
1191 The Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954; 1956) 493,309 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1191
1492 Border Morning Mail (Albury, NSW : 1934 - 1935; 1938 - 1952) 4,505 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1492
1852 Daily Mirror (Sydney, NSW : 1941 - 1955) 578,363 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1852
1867 Coolamon Farmers' Review (NSW : 1910 - 1917) 8,447 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1867
1873 The Standard (Port Adelaide, SA : 1959 - 1965) 23,965 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1873

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 31 Dec 2023 Change since 10 Dec 2023 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.349%
International 854,022 0 0 2,842 0.349%
National 657,326 0 0 204,582 0.269%
New South Wales 86,109,176 125,779 591,315 3,209,503 35.239%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.168%
Queensland 41,131,526 0 0 41,590 16.833%
South Australia 25,110,108 0 98,126 547,253 10.276%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.487%
Victoria 45,562,213 182,678 493,309 5,299,318 18.646%
Western Australia 25,369,631 0 0 679,829 10.382%

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

  Current total Change since 31 Dec 2023 Change since 10 Dec 2023 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.349%
International 854,022 0 0 0 0.349%
National 663,996 0 0 211,837 0.272%
New South Wales 86,109,176 125,779 598,706 4,175,519 35.239%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.168%
Queensland 41,131,526 0 0 41,590 16.833%
South Australia 25,110,108 0 98,126 549,329 10.276%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.487%
Victoria 45,562,213 182,678 493,309 4,019,158 18.646%
Western Australia 25,369,631 0 0 1,000,269 10.382%

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.