Technical Guidelines & Specifications

Over a period of two years, successful applicants will select newspapers in the public domain—published in their state or territory—and convert approximately 100,000 pages into digital files (primarily from microfilm), according to the technical guidelines outlined here.

Latest Guidelines for Applicants

• Technical Guidelines for 2025 Awards (PDF, 387 KB)
• For more information on applying for NDNP awards, see the NEH NDNP Program Guidelines
• Overview of Technical Guidelines (PDF, 1.78 MB)
• Examples of NDNP Digital Assets

Current Guidelines for Awardees

• Technical Guidelines for 2024 Awards (PDF, 375 KB)
• Technical Guidelines for 2023 Awards (PDF, 417 KB)
• Technical Guidelines for 2022 Awards (PDF, 423 KB)

Past Guidelines

• Technical Guidelines for 2021 Awards (PDF, 405 KB)
• Technical Guidelines for 2020 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2019 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2018 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2017 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2016 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2015 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2014 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2013 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2012 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2011 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2009 and 2010 Awards
• Technical Guidelines for 2007 and 2008 Awards

NDNP Resources

Selection Criteria

• Content Selection
• Microfilm Selection (PDF, 1.3 MB)
• N. W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual (1880-1922) - (See Digital Reference Collections)

Guidelines for Newspaper Title History Essays

• General Writing Guidelines for Title Essays (PDF, 255 KB)

Architecture Development

• APIs: How Machines Share and Expose Digital Collections
• Technical Premises and Digital Preservation (PDF, 220 KB)
• Structural Metadata & Use of XML (PDF, 149 KB)
• chronam (LC Newspaper Viewer Software) (external link)

Presentations & Publications Relating to NDNP

• Chronicling America for National History Day: Rights and Responsibilities (Library of Congress Webinar) (PDF, 7.5 MB) - Library of Congress, September 2024
• Introducing the New Chronicling America Interface (PDF, 947 KB) - Library of Congress, Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Consortium Partner2Partner Discussion, February 2024
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers Update (PDF, 6.9 MB) - Library of Congress, Center for the Book, November 2023
• Twenty-Year-Old OCR Gets A Makeover: New OCR Pipeline for Chronicling America (PDF, 2.6 MB) - DLF Forum, November 2023
• Chronicling America for National History Day: Turning Points in History (Library of Congress Webinar) (PDF, 10.7 MB) - Library of Congress, September 2023
• Using Chronicling America for Historical Research: The Atlanta Campaign of the United States Civil War (Library of Congress Webinar) (PDF, 13 MB) - Library of Congress and University of Georgia Libraries, May 2023
• Behind the Scenes of Chronicling America - IFLA Newspapers Section Blog - Library of Congress, March 2023
• Chronicling America’s Newspaper Biographies as Data - National Endowment for the Humanities, February 2023
• Chronicling America: Using Historical Newspapers (FDLP Academy Webinar) (PDF, 8 MB) - Library of Congress, December 2022
• Chronicling America Historical Newspapers for National History Day (Library of Congress Webinar) (PDF, 8 MB) - Library of Congress, September 2022
• Using Chronicling America for Genealogical Research, Find Your Ancestors in the Newspapers (Library of Congress Webinar) (PDF, 10.8 MB) - Library of Congress, August 2022
• New Interactive Map and Timeline Added to Chronicling America - Library of Congress, July 2022
• Newspaper Biographies in Digital Environments - National Endowment for the Humanities, May 2022
• Newspaper Navigator Search Application Now Live! - Library of Congress, September 2020
• Newspaper Navigator Surfaces Treasure Trove of Historic Images - Library of Congress, April 2020
• Visualizing Chronicling America Data: 15 Million Pages of Digitized Historical Newspapers - Library of Congress, May 2019
• Voices and Viewpoints in Chronicling America: Uses of Historical News for Education and Outreach - IFLA WLIC 2015
• National Digital Newspaper Program: Impact Study 2004-2014 (PDF, 281 KB) - National Endowment for the Humanities
• Bulking up: how accepted standards and evolving technology advance research in Chronicling America - IFLA International Newspapers Conference 2014
• Sustaining History's Rough Draft: Preservation and Practices in the National Digital Newspaper Program
• Preserving America's Historic Newspapers: Experiences from the Field
• meta|morphosis: microfilm-to-digital lecture series - University of Kentucky Libraries
• NDIIPP News and Events - "Mediated by Software"
• NDNP 2010 (PDF, 724 KB), presented at American Libraries Association (June 2010)
• D-Lib article, Littman, "Actualized Preservation Threats," (external link) (Jul/Aug 2007)
• JPEG2000 Historical Newspapers Profile Report (PDF, 1.9 MB)
• D-Lib article, Littman, "Technical Validation," (external link) (May 2006)
• More Presentations and Publications...

Resources for Preservation & Digital Conversion

Preserving Newspapers

• United States Newspaper Program Preservation Guidelines
• Caring for Your Collections: Preserving Newspapers

Digital Conversion

• AutoHotkey Applications for Digital Newspaper Production & Quality Assurance
• Digitisation projects and best practice (external link)
• Digitizing Microfilm/OCR
• Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI)
• Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness - Educopia Institute
• Metadata
• Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines - National Library of the Netherlands (KB) (PDF, 737 KB)
• METS Tools and Utilities

To view PDFs

Last Updated: 09/11/2024