Tribune on Trove: A New Digital Resource

The National Library of Australia (NLA) has recently added Tribune, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, to its collection of digitised and word-searchable historic newspapers. Tribune has now been digitised to cover the period from 1954 until 1976. The NLA will soon digitise the remaining editions of Tribune until it ceased publication in April 1991.

This digitisation will be particularly significant for researchers with an interest in the rise of the new social movements and the New Left as well as the activities of the labour movement during the relatively recent period of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The coverage of most other digitised daily newspapers (such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) ceases in 1954.

The digitisation of Tribune allows fine-grained searches using individual words or phrases, e.g. "women's liberation" or "Laurie Carmichael." The best starting point for examining Tribune is to use the "advanced search" function and to tick the title Tribune, which is listed under New South Wales newspapers. Digitisation also allows for the printing of particular articles and pages. Tribune's predecessor, the Workers Weekly (1923–39), was digitised some years ago and is similarly searchable.

The NLA's collection of digitised newspapers is found on the website Trove,¹ which is an online library database aggregator. Trove also includes online access to documents, maps, photos, diaries and books provided by several hundred other research and cultural institutions.