Papers Past is a collection of digitised newspapers, magazines and journals, letters and diaries and parliamentary papers. It contains millions of pages from historical news, magazines, letters, diaries and parliament.

The collection is available to search by first selecting a publication type (eg. newspapers/magazines). You then have the option to search all articles in that collection by keyword or name, dates, title and content type. Type can include advertisements, illustrations and articles.

A search in newspapers can return millions of results and includes all sections including advertisements.