Chronicling America is an open access, open source newspaper database and companion website. ^{[1] [2] [3]} It is produced by the United States National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. ^{[4] [5] [6]} The NDNP was founded in 2005. ^[7] The Chronicling America website was publicly launched in March 2007. ^{[8] [9] [10]} It is hosted by the Library of Congress. ^{[11] [12]} Much of the content hosted on Chronicling America is in the public domain. ^[13]

The database is searchable by key terms, state, language, time period, or newspaper. ^{[7] [14] [12]} The Chronicling America website contains digitized newspaper pages and information about historic newspapers to place the primary sources in context and support future research. ^{[14] [15] [16]} It hosts newspapers written in a variety of languages. ^{[17] [13]} In selecting newspapers to digitize, the site relies on the discretion of contributing institutions. ^[6]

The project describes itself as a "long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages." ^[15] Local participants in the project receive two-year grants to scan approximately 100,000 newspaper pages, primarily from microfilm. ^{[15] [18]} For newspapers that are not digitized, the website directs users to library locations that are known to have the desired records available. ^{[3] [16]}

History

The first series of newspaper digitization was completed with input from universities in 2007, and included public domain entries from six states and the District of Columbia. ^[16] The site was launched for public use In March 2007. ^{[8] [9] [10]}

In June 2009, the site added support for Web crawlers and API. In May 2011, the site added tools to share its digitized content on social media. ^[18] As of 2012, Chronicling America had over 5.2 million individual newspaper pages available for viewing and/or downloading, representing 801 titles from 32 states; though the project initially targeted newspapers from the 1900-1910 period, it had gradually expanded so that papers scanned currently span the years 1836-1922. Papers from 4 additional states ( Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, and North Carolina) were then slated to be added to the collection, and grant-funded projects to scan papers from these states were then underway so that the material could be added to the site in 2013. ^{[15] [19]}

By 2014, the website hosted digital newspaper records from thirty-six states. ^[3] By October 2015, that number had risen to thirty-eight, and it had digitized over 10 million pages. ^{[13] [20] [21]} As of 2016, the database had expanded its coverage to include content ranging from 1690 to 1963. ^{[22] [23]} Geographically, its coverage had then expanded to 48 states and 2 United States territories. ^[22] As of 2021, that expanded to support digitization of records from all U.S. states and territories. ^[23] As of 2020, it had digitized 16.3 million pages. ^[5]

References

External links

• Chronicling America at the Library of Congress website
• National Endowment for the Humanities webpage on NDNP
• Library of Congress webpage on NDNP