Chronicling America: Historic Newspapers

    

    In the 21st century world of Twitter, Instagram, and many other social media outlets, news is received through these media platforms and physical news outlets are seen less and less. Prior to the Internet, newspapers were the way of sending and receiving news for all aspects of life. Newspapers contained information including history, community information, political scandals, and much more. Chronicling America, produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, provides access to historic newspapers and digitized newspaper pages from 1777 to 1963. 

What does Chronicling America offer?

Chronicling America's newspaper collection has a large variety in content available. With 3,811 newspaper titles and over 20,117,500 pages, the information available is grand. Along with the many options, this collection also offers non-English newspapers including those in Spanish, German, and Croatian. All of the content has been digitized for complete access from microfilm. 

How to Search

There are three ways to search the Chronicling American site. There is a basic search feature where states and years can be chosen and search words can be entered. 

The Advanced Search option offers more details options to refine any search on the site. It offers state search, year search, language specification, and the ability to search within a specific newspaper title.

The All Digitized Newspapers search option allows state, ethnicity, and language search options. 

 U.S. Newspaper Directory

The U.S. Newspaper Directory offers guidance on identifying newspapers published from 1690 to present day. It offers details on those papers and states how to access them. 

Maps & Visualizations

Chronicling America offers interactive maps and graphs to visualize the "scope and coverage of newspapers" that they hold. Some of these tools include: 

Exploring Chronicling America Newspapers: All Digitized Titles: Analyzes the locations of the newspapers available

Chronicling America Ethnic Press Coverage: Presents location for newspaper aimed towards ethnic communities

Chronicling America Non-English Language Coverage: Offers where Non-English newspapers are located

 

More information on program guidelines, participation, and technical information can be found at https://www.neh.gov/projects/ndnp.html or https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/.

Additional Resources

National Digital Newspaper Program

The NDNP, which is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, is an effort to develop databases of U.S. newspapers and for online access.  

Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room

The Library of Congress offers access to a variety of newspaper collections all over the world. 

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Government Information Online is produced by the staff at the Oklahoma State University Libraries Government Documents Department, a regional depository for U.S. Government and Oklahoma state government documents. We are located on the 5th floor of the Edmon Low Library. Our department website can be reached at www.info.library.okstate.edu/government-documents. For more information or for research assistance, contact us at 405.744.6546. or email suzanne.reinman@okstate.edu.