The technical guidelines for all awards describe the specific technical requirements for inclusion of digital content in Chronicling America. All specifications must be met for awardees content to be accepted; all data will be verified and reviewed by the Library of Congress. 

NDNP supports a consistent technical specification for digital newspaper reproductions and associated metadata in order to maintain parity of services for materials from a variety of institutions and collections and to support the “best practices” of today’s understanding of digital preservation needs.

• Download the Technical Guidelines for the 2009 Award applications (PDF, 284KB)
• Download the Technical Guidelines for the 2010 Awards applications (PDF, 275KB)

Profiles and Schemas currently in use

• Image File Format Profiles
  • TIFF v1.7 (PDF, 47KB)
  • JPEG2000 v2.7 (PDF, 97KB)
  • PDF v2.1 (PDF, 88KB)
• OCR File Format Profile
  • OCR v1.12 (PDF, 88KB)
  • NDNP-ALTO OCR Schema v.1.4
  • See also METS ALTO XML Object Model
• Metadata Dictionary 2009 (PDF, 86KB)

• XML Templates and Schemas
  • Issue Metadata Template v1.9
  • Reel Metadata Template v1.7
  • Delivery Batch Template v1.4
  • NDNP-ALTO OCR Schema, v.1.4
  • XLINK Schema
• Sample Project Description (how to make use of these Specifications) (PDF, 36KB)
• Examples of NDNP Digital Assets

To view PDFs

Last Updated: 11/14/2014