Broadsheet: New Zealand’s feminist magazine has been digitised by the University of Auckland’s Libraries and Learning Services and is now publicly available online.

Broadsheet was a leading voice of the local women’s movement and was produced by the Auckland-based Broadsheet Collective from July 1972 to July 1997. It covered wide-ranging national and international concerns, including women’s rights, sexuality, Māori sovereignty, health, crime, politics, class, abortion and arts and literature.

Distributed nationally, Broadsheet was issued up to 10 times a year until spring 1991 when it became a quarterly. Its editorial content ranged from news, features and reviews, columns, letters and event notices to poetry, short stories and cartoons. Some well-known artists were among the women who contributed illustrations and photographs.

The Library identified Broadsheet as a candidate for digitisation because of its importance as an historical source for second-wave feminism, women’s activism and the wider society of the period.

One of the goals of the Library’s digitisation strategy is to create digital collections of high research and academic value to support learning and research. Broadsheet clearly meets these criteria and it is hoped that this searchable online resource will help generate new scholarship and interest.

Reflecting the academic interest in the initiative, historian and Associate Professor Caroline Daley said “As women around the world respond to the ‘me too’ hashtag, it’s especially timely to remember the feminist campaigns of the late twentieth century. Sometimes it seems that not much has changed, but reading Broadsheet reminds us of the battles that were won thanks in no small part to the women of the Broadsheet Collective.”

The Library’s other digitised text collections include Early New Zealand Books and the Journal of the Polynesian Society.

View Broadsheet online or read the physical copies in the New Zealand and Pacific Collection, General Library, Level G. Elsewhere, the archival records of the Broadsheet Collective can be accessed at Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland City Library.

Stephen Innes, Special Collections Manager

References

Rosier, P. (1992). Broadsheet: Twenty years of Broadsheet magazine. Auckland: New Women’s Press.