Hong Kong Public Libraries' (HKPL) Multimedia Information System (MMIS) has eleven issues of newspapers that were published from 1853 to 1987. They are "The Kung Sheung Daily News", "Wah Kiu Yat Po", "Chinese Serial", "The Chinese Mail", "The Chinese Evening Post", "Tai Kung Pao", "China Mail", "Hong Kong Daily Press", "Hong Kong Sunday Herald", "Hong Kong Telegraph" and "Hong Kong Weekly Press" which can totally provide over 1.8 million pages of digitized content to readers.

Through the access of these papers, readers can learn the development on the politics, economy, education, health and hygiene, culture, housing, population, social welfare, public services and other social aspects of Hong Kong over the past 120 years. Besides, these papers also record important historical events of Hong Kong and the world, such as the drought and the water restriction of Hong Kong in the last century and the news of the WWII. They are valuable resources to readers and scholars who study the modern history of Hong Kong and the world.

MMIS provides two effective ways to readers to extract their target information from the papers. They are searching by publishing date or content keyword.

Searching by Publishing Date
Readers can access the papers of a period by the following steps:
(1) Choose "Old HK Newspaper" from Basic Search
(2) Input the publishing time in the search box, such as 1969 or 1969-08 or 1969-08-01
(3) Click on the "Keyword" button
(4) Choose "Title" as the searching target
(5) Click on the "Search" button to start searching
With the specific time condition, MMIS will provide readers with all corresponding records sorted by titles.

Searching by Content Keyword
Reader can also access headlines of specific topic from the papers by the following steps:
(1) Choose "Old HK Newspaper" from Basic Search
(2) Input the phrase for searching in the search box. The phrase can be "Kai Tak Airport" if readers want to study the development of aviation in Hong Kong, or "World War II" if readers want to learn the news of WWII.
(3) Click on the "Keyword" button
(4) Choose "Content" as the searching target
(5) Click on the "Search" button to start searching
From the list of search returns, readers can click on the titles to launch the front-page and the total page numbers. An asterisk in red will indicate the page that has the keyword in the headline.

Searching by Content Keyword and Publishing Date Range
To further improve Basic Search that only allows searching by date or content keyword; and the maximum return is limited to 100, MMIS provides Advanced Search that allows readers to access the headlines of specific topic by content keyword along with the publishing date range; and the maximum can be also increased to more than 300. Readers can conduct Advanced Search with the following steps:
(1) Choose "Old HK Newspaper" from Advanced Search
(2) Choose "Content Keyword" and input the phrase for searching in the search box at Part A: Keyword Search
(3) Choose preference from the Maximum Returnat the part of Result Options. In additions, readers can also choose the style of display and sorting for the return.
(4) Click on the check box of Publishing Date Rangeand input the publishing time for searching
(5) Click on the "Search" button to start searching
From the returns, readers can click on the page marked with red asterisk to browse their target information from headlines.