DigitalNZ / Papers Past (New Zealand)

searched live by Provara

What it holds

Papers Past newspapers 1839–1980s (full text), plus NZ library, museum and archive collections

Who runs it, and on what terms

Provider

National Library of New Zealand

Licence for use here

Developer terms permit commercial use of metadata with link-back; per-record usage flags honoured

Attribution

Link to the DigitalNZ/Papers Past landing page; credit the content partner

Cost to search

free

Terms read

2026-09-06

Official documentation

https://digitalnz.org/developers/api-docs-v3

How to search it in Provara

1. Historic newspapers: ask Provara for an obituary or a wedding notice by name, place and approximate year.
2. Archive catalogues and finding aids: ask Provara what an archive holds on a family or a place.
3. Historical photographs: ask Provara for a photograph of a place or an event your family was part of.
4. Provara searches this archive alongside every other live one, ranks what comes back by how many of the person's recorded facts each hit contains, and shows you the record with a ready citation. Nothing is added to your tree until you confirm it.

Record types here

• Historic newspapers — Obituaries, marriage and birth notices, local news and legal notices. Often the only record of a death date or a maiden name before civil registration.
• Archive catalogues and finding aids — Descriptions of what an archive holds, so you know what to request before you travel or write.
• Historical photographs — Portraits, places and events held by libraries and archives, free to view and often free to reuse.

Every licence on these pages was read from the archive's own terms on the date shown. Provara proposes only what a record it has read supports, shows the record beside the claim, and marks anything unsourced as a hypothesis. Nothing on this page states a fact about any person.