Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise as one of the parliamentary representatives on the National Library Council to advise with pride that the National Library has commenced digitising Australian newspapers. Two weeks ago the National Library commenced the digitisation of seven Australian newspapers that date back to 1803 and extend to 1954. The collection includes the Sydney Gazette, the Argus, the Courier Mail, the Hobart Town Gazette, the Adelaide Advertiser, the West Australian and the Northern Territory Times. These newspapers represent the main paper published in each state and territory. Significantly, the newspapers contain records of the social, political, economic and cultural issues of the day. Digitising the newspapers will give an insight into Australians’ earlier way of life. It will also provide the community with a more accessible understanding of our history, and I know these papers are also highly sought after to trace family histories. The project is a worldwide project and will enable easy access to a vast and rich collection of unique Australian documents.

The digitisation project of the National Library of Australia is on a par with similar systems already established in Britain and Canada, and it is something government should think about giving special financial assistance to in the near future. The National Library will digitise 500,000 newspaper pages provided by state libraries in the form of microfilm. This microfilm will be converted into digital records and then converted into text searchable files. The project has been in development for the past year and builds on the National Library’s ongoing project of digitising selected archives.

Since 1995, the National Library has digitised more than 10,000 selected rare and iconic Australian documents to make them easily available online and therefore to increase their accessibility to the broader Australian community. I take this opportunity to congratulate the leadership of the National Library for taking the initiative in developing this important national project. The unbounding commitment of the staff to this project has been critical in progressing the Library’s vision of making documents of national significance accessible to ordinary Australians.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a group of students visiting Parliament House from Alphington Grammar School, which is on the edge of my electorate and shared between my electorate and the member for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner. It is exciting that this service will enable students from schools such as Alphington Grammar to access some of Australia’s most insightful records of our nation’s early days of colonial settlement. We should be encouraging more than ever the education of our young people about our history. These students are just one group of many who will benefit from the easy public access to these historically significant newspapers.

All Australians, wherever they are located, will be able to access these historical newspaper articles. This exciting project will change the way people from all around Australia and beyond can access Australia’s specific historical resources. The digitisation of newspapers will enable Australia to share its history with the world and give an insight into early Australian life and the issues of the day. I look forward with great anticipation to the first digitised newspaper articles being made available publicly online from October 2007.

I also think that, given the leadership of the National Library’s council and staff on this project, we should be encouraging the Australian government to consider in the budget rounds over the next couple of years some additional financial assistance for this very expensive project. It might also be appropriate if a number of our large newspaper proprietors thought about an investment in their own history and in a national project of significance to readers who have supported them throughout the life of their newspapers. They might also think about funding other specific projects and the work of the National Library. This is a very important historical project. I commend the project to the House and congratulate the National Library on undertaking this very significant initiative.