Electronic format
Newspapers in electronic or digital format are usually in one of four forms:
Virtual replicas
These are fully digitized virtual replicas of original printed editions, see for example Historic Australian Newspapers.
Online text file databases
These contain all the main news reports in text or html style documents. They do not contain the original page layout, columns, pictures or any advertisem*nts or notices. See Proquest Australia and New Zealand Newsstreamfor example.
Newspapers in CD-ROM or DVD
These are very similar to text file databases except they are not usually accessible online through the Internet. They are normally available on computers in Library Reading Rooms. See for example the Age Multi-Year CD-ROM.
Newspapers in PDF format on CD-ROM or DVD
Newspapers in this format are replicas of original print editions of newspapers. They usually do not have Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. This means they cannot be searched by keywords. Researchers must browse page by page to find wanted items.
