Chronicling America
ProducerNational Digital Newspaper Program (United States)
History2007–present
LanguagesEnglish, Spanish, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, Russian, Bulgarian (non-exhaustive list)
Access
CostFree
Coverage
Format coverageNewspapers
Temporal coverage1690–1963
Geospatial coverageThe United States and its territories
Links
Websitechroniclingamerica.loc.gov
Title list(s)chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/

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

  1. ^ Varnum, Kenneth J. (3 July 2019). New Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to Know: A LITA Guide. Library and Information Technology Association. American Library Association. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-8389-1782-4.
  2. ^ "National Endowment for the Humanities Selects UNT Libraries for a Sixth Round of the National Digital Newspaper Program". University of North Texas Libraries. 27 August 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021. Chronicling America is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress in an effort to build a nationwide, open-access repository of digitized historic newspapers.
  3. ^ a b c Gunter, Donna J. (1 October 2014). "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers". The Charleston Advisor. 16 (2): 22–23. doi:10.5260/chara.16.2.22 – via Ingenta Connect.
  4. ^ Manne, Kevin (24 October 2021). "A clearer window into the past". The Niagara Gazette. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  5. ^ a b Lee, Benjamin Charles Germain; Mears, Jaime; Jakeway, Eileen; Ferriter, Meghan; Adams, Chris; Yarasavage, Nathan; Thomas, Deborah; Zwaard, Kate; Weld, Daniel S. (2020-10-19). "The Newspaper Navigator Dataset". Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. CIKM 2020. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 3055–3062. doi:10.1145/3340531.3412767. ISBN 978-1-4503-6859-9. S2CID 224281641.
  6. ^ a b Preston, Katherine K. (December 2016). "Digital Databases for English-Language Newspapers in the United States". Nineteenth-Century Music Review. Cambridge University Press. 13 (2): 405–419. doi:10.1017/S147940981600001X. ISSN 1479-4098. S2CID 157575916.
  7. ^ a b Penn, Tonijala; Butterhof, Robin; Thomas, Deborah (10 August 2015). "Voices and Viewpoints in Chronicling America: Uses of Historical News for Education and Outreach" (PDF). International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-11-30. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  8. ^ a b Culpepper, Jetta (25 September 2007). "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers". Reference Reviews. Emerald Group Publishing. 21 (7): 52–53. doi:10.1108/09504120710821875. ISSN 0950-4125.
  9. ^ a b "First Drafts of History at Your Fingertips". American Historical Association Today. American Historical Association. 27 March 2007. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  10. ^ a b "Bringing Historic Newspapers to Your Desktop: The National Digital Newspaper Program". National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Library of Congress. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  11. ^ "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" (PDF). Ohio History Connection. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-10-06. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  12. ^ a b Sweeney, Mark (1 September 2007). "The National Digital Newspaper Program: Building on a Firm Foundation". Serials Review. 33 (3): 188–189. doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2007.05.005. ISSN 0098-7913. S2CID 61017432.
  13. ^ a b c Sroka, Marek; Nectoux, Tracy (2017). ""The Dwindling Legacy that Is Food for Mice and Flames": Discovery and Preservation of Illinois Historic Newspapers through the Illinois Digital Newspaper Project, 2009–2015". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Illinois State Historical Society. 110 (1): 87–107. doi:10.5406/jillistathistsoc.110.1.0087. ISSN 1522-1067. JSTOR 10.5406/jillistathistsoc.110.1.0087 – via JSTOR.
  14. ^ a b Fuller-Seeley, K. (1 September 2008). Organization of American Historians. "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers". Journal of American History. Oxford University Press. 95 (2): 624–625. doi:10.2307/25095783. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 25095783.
  15. ^ a b c d "About Chronicling America". Chronicling America. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2009-05-10. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
  16. ^ a b c Reakes, Patrick; Ochoa, Marilyn (2009-12-01). "Non-Commercial Digital Newspaper Libraries: Considering Usability". Internet Reference Services Quarterly. 14 (3–4): 92–113. doi:10.1080/10875300903336357. ISSN 1087-5301. S2CID 57983074.
  17. ^ Sroka, Marek (2017-04-03). "Researching Polish and Polish-American Historical Newspapers and Periodicals in International Digital Collections: Opportunities and Challenges". Slavic & East European Information Resources. 18 (1–2): 33–40. doi:10.1080/15228886.2017.1322377. ISSN 1522-8886. S2CID 148833575.
  18. ^ a b Yarasavage, Nathan; Butterhof, Robin; Ehrman, Christopher (10 June 2012). "National digital newspaper program". Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital Libraries. JCDL '12. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 399–400. doi:10.1145/2232817.2232910. ISBN 978-1-4503-1154-0. S2CID 25698471.
  19. ^ "Award Recipients". National Digital Newspaper Program. Library of Congress. October 22, 2012. Archived from the original on 2011-03-01. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
  20. ^ LaFrance, Adrienne (7 October 2015). "12 Historic Gems From One of the Best Time Capsules Online". The Atlantic. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  21. ^ Rothman, Lily (7 October 2015). "See the Original Newspaper Headlines From 10 Major Moments in American History". Time. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  22. ^ a b "Chronicling America Newspaper Project Reaches 48 States". National Endowment for the Humanities. 29 August 2019. Archived from the original on 2019-12-01. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  23. ^ a b "Historic Newport newspapers and those from around the state now can be viewed digitally". The Newport Daily News. 16 January 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.

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