Chronicling America
Newspaper archive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
| Producer | National Digital Newspaper Program (United States) |
|---|---|
| History | 2007–present |
| Languages | English, Spanish, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, Russian, Bulgarian (non-exhaustive list) |
| Access | |
| Cost | Free |
| Coverage | |
| Format coverage | Newspapers |
| Temporal coverage | 1690–1963 |
| Geospatial coverage | The United States and its territories |
| Links | |
| Website | Official Webpage |
| Title list(s) | www |
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 April 2026, the site reports nearly 24 million pages.[24]
In August 2025 the Library of Congress upgraded to a new website for Chronicling America, with existing URLs automatically redirecting to the new address.[25] Changes include:
- new Chronicling America URL https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/
- new interactive map
- new search options for ethnicity, location, and language
- new Advanced Search form
- new API documentation.[26]