Newspaper pictures now available online

17 June, 2005

Newspaper pictures now available online

Readers will find it a whole lot easier to get their hands on pictures from APN New Zealand publications with the launch of the NZ Herald publisher's new online print ordering service.

APN is opening up much of its newspaper picture archives and installing the images on a dedicated web-site so people can order prints for personal or domestic use.

Pictures on http://newspix.co.nz will initially be selected from the more than 600,000 images already held by the company in electronic form. Hard copy and negative images are being progressively digitised for installation on the site.

Major contributors to NewsPix include New Zealand's biggest daily newspaper the New Zealand Herald, the Herald on Sunday and The Aucklander. Archives will eventually also include images from the NZ Weekly News, first published in 1863.

Selected images from the Bay of Plenty Times, Rotorua's Daily Post, the Northern Advocate in Whangarei and Hawkes Bay Today are also being progressively added. Other APN publications and third parties contribute to PressPix on an ad-hoc basis.

Matthew Harman who is APN's digital media general manager says the aim is to build the country's biggest image database with a New Zealand focus.

"For example, the New Zealand Herald has an unequalled archive of more than a million historical images dating from the 1870s and we're flat out digitising the best of them.

"Eventually this site will be pretty much a one-stop shop for any picture you need to illustrate life in New Zealand for more than 130 years. If you're looking for that long-lost Herald picture of Uncle Jim in his army uniform, this is a good place to start your search."

While Mr Harman is unsure how long the archiving process will take he expects to have the majority of the non-digital pictures up on the site within 12 months.

In the digital age, people have been increasingly asking for better and easier access to newspaper images Mr Harman says.

"NewsPix is updated daily, providing images of the day's news from our award winning team of photojournalists, as well as historic, scenic, and stock-shot images from our photographic archives," Mr Harman says.

"I've got to admit, sometimes it was a bit of a nightmare ordering pictures but this new site really streamlines the process."

Collections are categorised and there's a multi-level search structure created especially for the site making it straight-forward to locate and access specific images.

Site searches are free and people wishing to download images for domestic use must register on the site for a user name and password.

Mr Harman says subscribers should read the conditions of use on the site before purchasing pictures. Quotes and pricing structures can be obtained by emailing photosales@apn.co.nz.

The company has also set up a separate web site for organisations such as advertising agencies and publishers to access published images for commercial use.

The commercial-oriented website at http://presspix.co.nz enables commercial organisations to download pictures appearing in APN publications.

ENDS

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