Trove: Still a buried treasure

The process of digitization has proven to be a boon for researchers, and especially for historians, because producing a digitized record of a thing allows researchers anywhere in the world to have access to artefacts. Digitization is especially important for mass communication researchers studying issues surrounding news. Digitization of news publications enables researchers to conduct word, phrase or other thematic searches using appropriate software. But where content has not been digitized, researchers must undertake cumbersome searches by physically reading through the original documents or some analogue record, like microfiche, and then they are limited by the assiduity of themselves, their teams and by the degradation of the originals as they age. Researchers in Australia are considerably assisted by the existence of the Trove database, which has digitized the content of Australian newspapers up to the end of 1954. The National Library of Australia considers Australian copyright law, which says content must be at least 70 years old, limits what may be digitized. Researchers who want to look at more recent news content must do so via state libraries’ microfiche records, limiting access. To make access equitable and democratic, Trove should digitize newspaper content into the twenty-first century.