Chronicling America Website Migration

This page includes the latest information about the Chronicling America website migration. Contact Ask-A-Librarian with any questions or feedback. Subscribe to the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers email list for more updates.

Important Links

For Chronicling America Website Users:

For Chronicling America API and Bulk Data Users:

Chronicling America Migration Update

Updated June 4, 2025

On August 4, 2025, the Library of Congress will complete the transition of the Chronicling America Historic Newspapers website to a new interface and back-end search infrastructure.

Visitors going to chroniclingamerica.loc.gov will be sent to the new Chronicling America website, which will continue to provide free access to historic digitized newspapers. The URL chroniclingamerica.loc.gov will continue to be the home of the Chronicling America collection and will permanently redirect people to the new site.

Chronicling America was originally launched in 2007 and later updated to the current version of the website in 2011. Since that time, the site saw the growth of the collection to include over 21 million newspaper pages from every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), NDNP continues to award funds to cultural heritage institutions around the United States to participate in the program.

In the new system, the digitized newspapers will become part of a larger Library of Congress digital collections framework that recently received major upgrades to accommodate future growth and expansion of the collection. New website features include faceted browse options (refine searches by ethnicity, location, subject, language, etc.), improved image viewing and manipulation, image sharing, improved Advanced Search form options, and more.

Digital Humanities scholars and researchers who access the collection via computational methods will continue to have access to bulk OCR but should transition to using the LoC.gov API at loc.gov/apis. Bulk OCR downloads can be accessed from the longstanding OCR Data page until further notice when a new "Datasets" page will be made available on the new site.

As part of the updates, the United States Newspaper Directory 1690-Present has also been migrated into a separate searchable collection. Users can access the new Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, which is a searchable index of newspapers (in all formats) published in the United States since 1690. This directory can help users identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, how to access them, and when available, offer links to digitized content in Chronicling America. For a detailed overview of the Directory, search tips, and FAQs, please consult the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries: A Guide for Researchers.

Users are encouraged to use the new site before August 4. A Research Guide on using Chronicling America in the new environment is also available. Please subscribe to the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers email list for more updates.

How We're Redirecting Traffic

On August 4, 2025, users going to chroniclingamerica.loc.gov will be sent to the new Chronicling America website. In most cases, bookmarks, citations, or other links to items on the legacy site will be redirected automatically for you.

Below is a summary of our strategy for redirecting links (URLs). The following list is not exhaustive but is provided to help set expectations for most users.

Browsing

  • Links to individual newspaper pages, newspaper issues, and newspaper titles will automatically redirect. See below for examples.

    Category Link in Legacy Site Redirected Link in New Site
    Newspaper Page https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83009573/1859-10-20/ed-1/seq-1/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83009573/1859-10-20/ed-1/?sp=1
    Newspaper Issue https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1925-06-01/ed-1/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1925-06-01/ed-1/?st=gallery
    Newspaper Title https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/ https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/
  • Links to the "All Digitized Newspapers" tab, calendar view navigation, and MARC title record views will automatically redirect to the new site. See below for examples.

    Category Link in Legacy Site Redirected Link in New Site
    All Digitized Newspapers https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/titles/
    Title Calendar View https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045227/issues/ https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045227/?st=calendar
    MARC Title Records https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/marc/ https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045487/
  • Links to downloadable files in PDF, JP2, and other formats will automatically redirect. See below for examples.

    Category Link in Legacy Site Redirected Link in New Site
    PDF Page Link Download PDF (legacy site) Download PDF (new site)
    JPEG 2000 (JP2) Page Link Download JP2 (legacy site) Download JP2 (new site)
    Full Text Page Link https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83009573/1859-10-20/ed-1/seq-1/ocr/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83009573/1859-10-20/ed-1/?sp=1&st=text

Searching

If you've saved links with specific search terms, many will still work by redirecting you to a similar search on our new site. Because we've made improvements to our search index and added more newspaper content, the results from your old search links will most likely look different. The Library cannot guarantee that all links with specific search terms will resolve. It's best to start a new search in the new site.

API, Bulk Data, and OCR Downloads

Users who access Chronicling America via computational methods will continue to have access to bulk OCR but should transition to using the LoC.gov API at loc.gov/apis. Bulk OCR downloads can be accessed from the longstanding OCR Data page until further notice when a new "Datasets" page will be made available on the new site.

Additionally, the Library has created new documentation to assist Chronicling America users who utilize the new API on the new Chronicling America website. More information is available on the Library of Congress' Data Exploration GitHub repository and the Chronicling America Guide for Researchers. The new API documentation contains information about using the LoC.gov API with the Chronicling America collection. Additionally there are six (6) Jupyter notebooks designed specifically for using the loc.gov API to access Chronicling America content. Stay tuned to this page for more updates.

Please email Ask-A-Librarian if you encounter any issues or have questions.

Last Updated: 06/04/2025