The Many and Varied Editions of the Auckland Star
What has many editions and only one? Tāmaki Makaurau’s long-running newspaper, The Auckland Star. A researcher’s worst nightmare is knowing of a source that no longer exists, and the Star is a source like no other in that it was once published as several editions every day, yet nobody bothered to collect them all. Auckland Council Libraries holds a near-continuous run of the daily periodical from its origin as the Evening Star in the 1870s to its present incarnation as the Sunday Star–Times . However, a decision was made over a century ago to only retain a single daily copy, a mere sampling of the Star’s copious output. This decision still impacts historians and researchers today and raises important questions: why did the Star print so many daily editions and what are we missing by their absence? Image: The Auckland Star masthead with various edition stamps underneath dating from 1926 through 1975. Despite covering the same geographic area—urban Auckland—the long-running newspa...