This paper describes the building of a digital library collection of historic newspapers. The newspapers (Niupepa in Maori), which were published in New Zealand during the period 1842 to 1933, form a unique historical record of the Maori language, and of events from an historical perspective. Images of these newspapers have been converted to digital form, electronic text extracted from these, and the collection is now being made available over the Internet as a part of the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL) project at the University of Waikato.