''Chronicling America'' is an

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

newspaper database and companion website. It is produced by the United States National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

and the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. The NDNP was founded in 2005. The ''Chronicling America'' website was publicly launched in March 2007. It is hosted by the Library of Congress. Much of the content hosted on ''Chronicling America'' is in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

. The database is searchable by key terms, state, language, time period, or newspaper. The ''Chronicling America'' website contains digitized newspaper pages and information about historic newspapers to place the primary sources in context and support future research. It hosts newspapers written in a variety of languages. In selecting newspapers to digitize, the site relies on the discretion of contributing institutions. 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." Local participants in the project receive two-year grants to scan approximately 100,000 newspaper pages, primarily from microfilm. For newspapers that are not digitized, the website directs users to library locations that are known to have the desired records available.

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 Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

. The site was launched for public use In March 2007. In June 2009, the site added support for Web crawlers and

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

. In May 2011, the site added tools to share its digitized content on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

. 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 Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, and

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

) 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. By 2014, the website hosted digital newspaper records from thirty-six states. By October 2015, that number had risen to thirty-eight, and it had digitized over 10 million pages. As of 2016, the database had expanded its coverage to include content ranging from 1690 to 1963. Geographically, its coverage had then expanded to 48 states and 2 United States territories.{{Cite web, date=29 August 2019, title=Chronicling America Newspaper Project Reaches 48 States, url=https://www.neh.gov/news/chronicling-america-newspaper-project-reaches-48-states, url-status=live, access-date=30 November 2021, website=

, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191201172009/https://www.neh.gov/news/chronicling-america-newspaper-project-reaches-48-states , archive-date=2019-12-01 As of 2021, that expanded to support digitization of records from all U.S. states and territories. As of 2020, it had digitized 16.3 million pages.

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
Internet properties established in 2007 2007 establishments in the United States Chronicling History of newspapers in the United States Geographic region-oriented digital libraries American digital libraries Historic newspaper digitization projects Newspaper archives