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. To explore past changes, see the dashboard archive.

  • 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, 14 April 2024

Total articles and user activity¶

Latest data harvest 14 April 2024
First data harvest 24 April 2022
Total harvests 104
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_activity.csv

As of 14 April 2024 there are 248,400,892 digitised newspaper articles in Trove.

  Current total Change since 07 Apr 2024 Change since 17 Mar 2024 Change since 24 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
All articles 248,400,892 61,932 626,558 13,888,802 100.00%
Articles with corrections 15,596,715 16,529 66,327 1,741,176 6.28%
Articles with tags 4,897,392 792 3,251 494,398 1.97%
Articles with comments 278,517 339 1,070 39,826 0.11%

Total articles by publication year¶

Latest data harvest 14 April 2024
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 100
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 14 April 2024
First data harvest 19 April 2022
Total harvests 100
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 07 Apr 2024 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 14 April 2024
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 105
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_category.csv
  Current total Change since 07 Apr 2024 Change since 17 Mar 2024 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
Advertising 46,577,574 25,458 112,884 3,075,867 18.751%
Article 172,178,283 32,700 414,548 9,385,823 69.315%
Arts And Culture 4,561 8 8 1,191 0.002%
Classified Advertisements And Notices 1,646 0 0 223 0.001%
Commerce And Business 5,698 0 7 2,702 0.002%
Detailed Lists, Results, Guides 27,642,976 3,279 93,983 1,391,015 11.128%
Display Advertisement 504 3 3 40 0.000%
Editorial 17,953 2 9 4,546 0.007%
Family Notices 2,016,396 507 5,197 81,593 0.812%
Humour 35,540 104 306 8,032 0.014%
Law, Courts, And Crime 13,630 5 75 4,167 0.005%
Letters 14,338 6 27 2,328 0.006%
Literature 37,637 8 12 2,675 0.015%
News 15,821 8 42 5,403 0.006%
Obituaries 15,978 4 41 4,845 0.006%
Official Appointments And Notices 1,280 0 0 215 0.001%
Puzzles 51,331 0 0 11,399 0.021%
Reviews 3,266 5 6 1,285 0.001%
Shipping Notices 3,213 0 3 1,408 0.001%
Sport And Games 20,403 1 2 5,863 0.008%
Weather 17,084 1 1 7,727 0.007%

Newspaper titles¶

Latest data harvest 14 April 2024
First data harvest 20 April 2022
Total harvests 102
Data https://github.com/wragge/trove-newspaper-totals/blob/master/data/total_articles_by_newspaper.csv

As of 14 April 2024 there are 1,804 different newspapers in Trove.

Total newspapers 1,804
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 07 Apr 2024 Change since 17 Mar 2024 Change since 20 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 8 0 0 0 0.42%
International 13 0 0 0 0.68%
National 9 0 0 4 0.47%
New South Wales 559 0 1 44 29.13%
Northern Territory 8 0 0 0 0.42%
Queensland 107 0 0 3 5.58%
South Australia 161 0 1 7 8.39%
Tasmania 115 0 0 0 5.99%
Victoria 442 0 2 35 23.03%
Western Australia 381 0 0 31 19.85%

Newspapers added since 07 Apr 2024

  • No newspapers added in this period.

Newspapers added since 17 Mar 2024

  • No newspapers added in this period.

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 07 Apr 2024

title_id title change in articles link
587 The Nathalia Herald and Picola, Narioka, Kotupna and Moira Advertiser (Vic. : 1884 - 1918) 7,813 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title587
1191 The Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954; 1956) 1 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1191
1813 The Pastoral Times (South Deniliquin, NSW : 1866 - 1912; 1921 - 1923; 1926 - 1931; 1941 - 1950) 28,276 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1813
1882 Moruya Examiner (NSW : 1881 - 1896) 7,370 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1882
1891 Hills and Valley Messenger (Port Adelaide, SA : 1984 - 2011) 18,472 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1891

Changes in the number of articles from newspapers since 17 Mar 2024

title_id title change in articles link
587 The Nathalia Herald and Picola, Narioka, Kotupna and Moira Advertiser (Vic. : 1884 - 1918) 7,813 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title587
1191 The Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954; 1956) 498,889 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1191
1813 The Pastoral Times (South Deniliquin, NSW : 1866 - 1912; 1921 - 1923; 1926 - 1931; 1941 - 1950) 55,181 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1813
1881 Braidwood Observer and Miner's Advocate (NSW : 1859 - 1862) 3,634 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1881
1882 Moruya Examiner (NSW : 1881 - 1896) 18,845 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1882
1891 Hills and Valley Messenger (Port Adelaide, SA : 1984 - 2011) 41,842 https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1891

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 07 Apr 2024 Change since 17 Mar 2024 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.327%
International 854,022 0 0 2,842 0.344%
National 657,326 0 0 204,582 0.265%
New South Wales 87,862,910 35,646 77,660 4,963,237 35.371%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.165%
Queensland 41,131,526 0 0 41,590 16.559%
South Australia 25,302,116 18,472 41,842 739,261 10.186%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.381%
Victoria 47,660,015 7,814 507,056 7,397,120 19.187%
Western Australia 25,369,631 0 0 679,829 10.213%

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

  Current total Change since 07 Apr 2024 Change since 17 Mar 2024 Change since 19 Apr 2022 Percentage of total
ACT 3,296,997 0 0 0 1.327%
International 854,022 0 0 0 0.344%
National 663,996 0 0 211,837 0.267%
New South Wales 87,862,910 35,646 81,802 5,929,253 35.371%
Northern Territory 409,433 0 0 0 0.165%
Queensland 41,131,526 0 0 41,590 16.559%
South Australia 25,302,116 18,472 50,384 741,337 10.186%
Tasmania 15,850,246 0 0 74 6.381%
Victoria 47,660,015 7,814 507,056 6,116,960 19.187%
Western Australia 25,369,631 0 0 1,000,269 10.213%

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.