New South Wales Newspapers

Australia New South Wales  Newspapers

The first Australian newspaper was published in Sydney, New South Wales on the 5th March 1803: the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. As the colony grew, so did the number of mastheads.

The State Library of New South Wales has built an excellent collection of newspapers, both current and historical and their catalogue is a good place to start if you are looking for a newspaper circulating in your ancestor's town or district. As part of their preservation project, they have microfilmed much of their holdings.

Using the State Library microfilms, the National Library of Australia has a major digitisation project underway making the historical newspapers available online.

The Sydney Dead Persons Society began indexing death notices in the Sydney newspapers. This project has grown into the Ryerson Index which now (July 2013) indexes death notices and obituaries in 222 newspapers and has over 4,000,000 entries.

State Library of Australia
If you are looking for a newspaper which circulated in the area where your ancestor had a connection, the place to start is the State Library of New South Wales catalogue. This will tell you:


 * Title including any other titles used during its publication life
 * Holdings
 * Publication place, publisher and dates including any suspension of publication or missing issues
 * Physical description
 * Reproduction (if any)
 * Subject
 * Previous or successor publications

The subject listing will be hyperlinked and enable you to find other publications circulating in the same area. The entry may also have a reference to "Ferguson":John Alexander Ferguson Bibliography of Australia (1941-1969).


 * State Library of New South Wales catalogue

Wikipedia
Wikipedia hosts two incomplete but substantial and growing lists of newspapers in New South Wales, one of English language titles and another of community language publications.

The list of English language newspapers gives:


 * Newspaper title
 * Place of publication ( Town or Sydney Suburb)
 * Whether the place of publication is in the Sydney region
 * Whether the title is current or defunct
 * Years of Publication


 * List of newspapers in New South Wales
 * List of non-English-language newspapers in New South Wales