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Library of Congress Announces Chronicling America Website Migration

November 2, 2023

The Library of Congress is excited to announce that the Chronicling America Historic Newspapers website is in the process of transitioning to a new interface and back-end search infrastructure. Visit the Chronicling America Website Migration page for details.

NEH Announces 2023 Awards to 12 States for Continued Digitization of U.S. Newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program

August 17, 2023

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced 2023 National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) funding for institutions representing 12 states to expand their contributions to the freely available Chronicling America online collection, hosted by the Library of Congress. Participating institutions from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wyoming received awards to expand their ongoing selection and digitization of newspapers from their state. Check out the full list of awards for details.

Newspapers from 1770 Now Available in Chronicling America

March 14, 2023

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress are excited to announce the addition of Massachusetts newspapers from the Boston Public Library to Chronicling America! With these contributions, Chronicling America now extends back to 1770. Explore the newspapers here.

Chronicling America Celebrates a Major Milesone by Reaching 20 Million Pages

September 20, 2022

The Chronicling America online collection now contains over 20 million digitized historical newspaper pages, a major milestone for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Read more about the collection's current coverage and future directions for the program in this blog post!

NEH Announces 2022 NDNP Awards adding New Hampshire, the 50th U.S. State to the Program!

September 13, 2022

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced 2022 National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) funding for institutions representing twelve states to select and digitize U.S. historic newspapers for contribution to the Chronicling America online collection, hosted by the Library of Congress. This round of funding marks the addition of the 50th U.S. state to the program, New Hampshire. Dartmouth College received NEH funding to serve as the hub of the New Hampshire Digital Newspaper Program. Participating institutions in eleven other states - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia - also received awards to expand their ongoing selection and digitization of newspapers from their state. Check out the full list of grants and this press release for more details.

Library of Congress Adds New Interactive Map and Timeline to Chronicling America

July 14, 2022

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce the publication of a new interactive map and timeline (external link) of all digitized titles in the Chronicling America online collection. The new “Exploring Chronicling America Newspapers” application dynamically maps publication locations of over 3,000 digitized newspapers currently in the collection. Users can explore the newspapers by clicking the dots on the map and/or access a time slider to interact with the timeline and explore the available digitized newspapers published between 1777-1963. This map is updated weekly. Read more about it in this blog post!

NEH Announces 2021 Awards for Massachusetts, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Montana, Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming in the National Digital Newspaper Program

August 17, 2021

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced new and renewed funding for state projects in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), an initiative jointly sponsored with the Library of Congress and supporting the Chronicling America online collection of digitized historic newspapers. Boston Public Library, representing Massachusetts, newly joins the program, with additional awards supporting ongoing projects at the Arkansas State Archive; Connecticut State Library; University of Florida, Gainesville; University of Georgia; Montana Historical Society; Providence Public Library (Rhode Island); University of North Texas; Wisconsin Historical Society; and University of Wyoming. These projects received two year grants to digitize up to 100,000 selected historic newspapers from their collections for contribution to the collection. Read more about it in the NEH report!

1.5 Million Pages Added to Chronicling America in 2020 - New Content from 1777!

January 19, 2021

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress are excited to announce that National Digital Newspaper Program awardee partners provided more than 1.5 million pages from nearly 600 digitized newspaper titles to Chronicling America in 2020. On top of that, recent additions from partners in Rhode Island include papers from the Revolutionary War – a first for the Chronicling America collection. Users can now explore digitized historic American newspapers from 1777 to 1963!

Visit the following blog posts from the Library of Congress and the NEH to read more about some of the notable titles added in 2020 including the earliest issue now available in Chronicling America, the Newport Gazette (Newport, Rhode Island) published on January 16, 1777.

Library of Congress Launches Newspaper Navigator Tool to Search Historical Newspaper Photos from Chronicling America

September 30, 2020

On September 15, 2020, the Library of Congress announced the release of Newspaper Navigator, an experimental web application which allows members of the public to visually browse 1.5 million photographs from Chronicling America using machine learning. Read more about the project or jump straight to the newly launched application to begin searching historical photos!

Seeing Editors: Metadata, Machine Learning and the Shapes of Social Justice (Online Event: Tuesday, September 15, 2020, 1:00 pm EDT)

September 8, 2020

Sponsored by the National Digital Newspaper Program, this online panel discussion will present the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team to learn about the editors behind newspapers on Chronicling America. How do we locate the hidden labor of editors, especially in newspapers that fought for social justice?

Each panelist will share their complementary projects, taking the multiethnic press of Louisiana as a test case. Joshua Ortiz Baco will speak about his work with the title essays to illuminate women and people of color who worked as editors. Jim Casey and Sarah Salter will share an excerpt from their ongoing work to develop critical methods for reading the collaborative craft of editing as a language of its own. Benjamin Lee will present his recent Library of Congress Labs Innovator-in-Residence project, the Newspaper Navigator, as a way to explore the visual patterns of historical newspapers using machine learning. Across each presentation, uncovering the history of editors through Chronicling America offers a way to learn how people in the past used the press to wrestle with difficult political questions and to advocate for justice for their communities.

After the panelists’ presentation, we intend to open the event up to an approximately 40-minute Question and Answer segment. The moderator, NEH Senior Program Officer Molly Hardy, will take questions over the chat, and then will field them to the panelists who will then respond.

NEH Announces 2020 Awards to 6 States for Continued Digitization of U.S. Newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program

August 11, 2020

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced 2020 National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) funding for institutions representing 6 states to expand their selection and digitization of U.S. historic newspapers for contribution to the freely available Chronicling America online collection, hosted by the Library of Congress. State projects receiving continued funding include the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; Alaska State Library, Juneau; State Historical Society of Colorado, Denver; Maine State Library, Augusta; University of Maryland, College Park; and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. Check out the full list of awards for details. Since 2005, cultural institutions in 50 states and territories have joined the program, jointly sponsored by the NEH and LC, and contributed more than 16 million digitized historical American newspaper pages, published between 1789 and 1963 in 20 different languages, to the collection.

Newspaper Navigator Announced: Extracting Photos, Maps, and Comics from over 16 Million Newspaper Pages!

May 14, 2020

Last week the Library of Congress Labs team shared some exciting news about the first phase of the Newspaper Navigator project. Led by Ben Lee, Innovator-in-Residence at the Library of Congress, Newspaper Navigator uses machine learning techniques to extract visual content such as photographs, illustrations, maps, and cartoons from the 16+ million pages in Chronicling America.

Read more about the project on the Signal Blog and consult Ben's repo (external Link), which includes code, a whitepaper, and demos, all available without restriction. Stay up to date on the project by visiting the Newspaper Navigator project page.

NEH Announces 2019 NDNP Awards adding Rhode Island, Virgin Islands and Wyoming partners to the program!

August 16, 2019

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced 2019 National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) funding for institutions representing 11 states to expand their selection and digitization of U.S. historic newspapers for contribution to the freely available Chronicling America online collection, hosted by the Library of Congress. New partners in the program include the Providence Public Library (Rhode Island); the US Virgin Islands (in partnership with the Universities of Florida and Puerto Rico); and the University of Wyoming (Laramie). Eight other participating institutions – Arkansas State Archives, Connecticut State Library, University of Delaware, University of Georgia, Minnesota Historical Society, Library of Virginia, West Virginia University and Wisconsin Historical Society - also received awards to expand their ongoing selection and digitization of newspapers from their state. Check out the full list of grants for details. Since 2005, cultural institutions in 50 states and territories have joined the program, jointly sponsored by the NEH and LC, and contributed more than 15 million digitized historical American newspaper pages, published between 1789 and 1963 in 19 different languages, to the collection.

Chronicling America Celebrates 15 Million Pages and New Data Visualizations!

May 21, 2019

Chronicling America, the online searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers, now includes more than 15 million pages. To mark the occasion, the Library of Congress NDNP staff has produced a set of interactive data visualizations that help reveal the variety of content available in a corpus of 15 million digitized newspaper pages! Read more about the data visualizations on the Signal Blog and visit the NDNP data visualizations web page for the latest updates.

NEH Announces 2018 NDNP Awards and University of Alabama Joins the Program!

August 30, 2018

Earlier this month, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced an additional $4.5 million in funding to institutions in 18 states (external Link) to expand selection and digitization of U.S. historic newspapers for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), including first-time awardee University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Seventeen other participating institutions - Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives, and Museums; University of California, Riverside; Colorado Historical Society; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; State Historical Society of Iowa; Maine State Library; University of Maryland, College Park; Central Michigan University; Montana Historical Society; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Jersey); University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ohio History Connection; South Dakota Department of Education; University of North Texas; and Washington State Library - received additional awards, each charged with selecting and digitizing approx. 100,000 newspaper pages from their state for contribution to the online newspaper collection "Chronicling America," hosted by the Library of Congress. Since 2005, cultural institutions in 46 states and Puerto Rico have contributed more than 13 million digitized American historical newspaper pages, published between 1789 and 1963 and in 14 different languages, to the collection.

Jointly sponsored by the NEH and LC, NDNP is a long-term effort to provide access to an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. This rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. The NEH grant program funds the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.... Read more about it & follow us on Twitter @librarycongress #ChronAm!!

2017 NDNP Awards Announced - Arkansas and Georgia Join the Program

August 4, 2017

From the National Endowment for the Humanities: Arkansas and Georgia Join the National Digital Newspaper Program (external Link)

We are happy to announce the addition of two new partners to the National Digital Newspaper Program: Arkansas and Georgia. NEH recently made awards to the Arkansas State Archives and the University of Georgia to digitize their historic newspapers. Forty-five states and one territory now participate in the program. Soon, we hope to have every state and U.S. territory represented in Chronicling America, the open access database of historic American newspapers jointly created by NEH, the Library of Congress, and state partners across the U.S.

NEH awards have also been issued to partners in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin to continue their contributions. You can read more about all of the awards in NEH’s press release (external Link).

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) is a partnership between NEH, the Library of Congress, and state partners. NEH awards enable state partners to choose and digitize newspapers representing their historical, cultural, and geographic diversity. To date, over 12 million pages of historic newspapers are currently available on Chronicling America, with more being added all the time. State partners also contribute rich essays about each newspaper title and its history.

2016 NDNP Awards Announced - Alaska, Colorado, Maine and New Jersey Join the Program

August 17, 2016

From the NEH Division of Preservation and Access Blog: Alaska, Colorado, Maine and New Jersey Join the National Digital Newspaper Program (external link)

We are happy to announce the addition of four new partners to the National Digital Newspaper Program! NEH has made awards to digitize historic newspapers to the Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives, and Museums; the Colorado Historical Society; the Maine State Library, and Rutgers University in New Jersey. With forty-three states and one territory now participating in the program, NEH is approaching its goal of representing every state and U.S. territory in Chronicling America, the open access database of historic American newspapers maintained by the Library of Congress.

This year, NEH awards have also been issued to state partners in Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas to continue their contributions to Chronicling America. You can read more about all of the awards issued by NEH in August’s press release (external link).

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) is a partnership between NEH, the Library of Congress, and state partners. NEH awards enable state partners to choose and digitize newspapers representing their historical, cultural, and geographic diversity. To date, over 11 million pages of historic newspapers are currently available on Chronicling America, with more being added all the time. State partners also contribute rich essays about each newspaper title and its historical context. NDNP recently expanded its scope to include newspapers published between 1690 and 1963.

Last Updated: 11/02/2023