Chronicling America is a useful database through the Library of Congress that includes digitized newspapers of the United States with additional material being updated and added constantly. This database can be focused on a specific state, specific newspaper, or specific words. The user can obtain full-text search results of newspapers from 1789-1963. The database subsequently has a feature to locate digital and print newspapers from 1690 to the present. Chronicling America is sponsored by the Library of Congress and the NEH, National Endowment for the Humanities. Chronicling America has a separate webpage that explains how the Library of Congress and the NEH digitized newspapers from their United States newspaper project from 1982-2011. Chronicling America selected newspapers to depict United States diversity. Newspapers can be digitized from microfilm and downloaded as various media such as TIFF files, PDF, JPEG, and OCR.
- Facts
- Date Range: 1789-1963.
- Publisher: Chronicling America
- Publisher About Page: Chronicling America About.
- Object Type: Newspapers
- Location of Original Materials: United States of America.
- Exportable Image?: Yes, PDF, TIFF, OCR, and other media.
- Fascimile image?: Yes.
- Full text searchable: Yes.
- Titles List Links: Newspaper Title Directory. and Cooperative Online Serials Program, CONSER.
- History/Provenance: Digitized from Microfilm.
Chronicling America consists of newspapers digitized from microfilm and are in the public domain and have no known copyright restrictions. Chronicling America contains approximately 140,000 bibliographic title holdings and 600,000 library holding records. that were included to create Chronicling America. The vast collection of newspapers depict life within the United States within the context the newspapers were created.
Reviews:
- https://www-emerald-com.mutex.gmu.edu/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09504120710821875/full/html.
- The above review is from 2007 and depicted an early review of Chronicling America. It is a vast and helpful resource for scholars, historians, and the general public as well as a great place to find hard to obtain newspapers.
- A subsequent review located here by Professor Susanna Lee described Chronicling America when she said, “Chronicling America is a great historical resource but it retains expert authority.” She went on to state that newspapers are selected by State authorities and approved by a national authority. Certain newspaper dates may be left out or have yet to be digitized. Her review is located here.
Access to Chronicling America is free and open to the public through the Library of Congress located here.
Chronicling America has the citation of each newspaper located at the bottom of the newspaper webpage that contains the full citation of each specific newspaper and specific page.
Chronicling America is an important resource for scholars and the general public. My only criticism of the site is that it only contains specific newspapers which intrigues me about what newspapers and information that is missing from Chronicling America. Nevertheless, it is possible to find other newspapers through websites such as Newspapers.com and Ancestry.com. as well as local public libraries and archives.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
