Chronicling America Website Migration

This page includes the latest information about the Chronicling America website migration. Contact the NDNP with any questions and 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:

New Chronicling America API Documentation and Tutorials Available

September 23, 2024

The Library of Congress 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.

Chronicling America Legacy Site: Data Freeze

March 1, 2024 (Updated July 23, 2024 -- changes in bold)

The Library of Congress has transitioned the longstanding Chronicling America website to a new digital environment alongside other Library of Congress digital collections. Read previous updates on this page for more information. While we are maintaining access to both the new and legacy sites through the end of 2024, after March 1, 2024, we will cease data updates to the legacy site. Please visit the new Chronicling America website for the most recent newspaper additions. To assist in identifying newly added content, please consult the Recent Additions to Chronicling America guide. As a reminder, 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 remain accessible from the longstanding OCR Data page until further notice. Later this year, on a date yet to be announced, existing URLs to Chronicling America pages will re-direct to the new environment. Stay tuned to this page for more updates.

Chronicling America URL Redirect Testing- Phase 2

January 10, 2024

The Library of Congress will continue behind-the-scenes image URL redirect testing for Chronicling America on Wednesday, January 10, 2024. During this phase, individual page-level JP2 and PDF file downloads from the legacy server will be re-directed to download from the new tile.loc.gov server. Users will not be redirected away from chroniclingamerica.loc.gov website and will hopefully not notice any difference. Users who do notice any errors or a significant lag in response time should contact [email protected] and consider working directly in the new Chronicling America interface. Stay tuned to this page for more updates.

Chronicling America URL Redirect Testing

December 19, 2023

The Library of Congress will begin behind-the-scenes image URL redirect testing for Chronicling America on Tuesday, December 19, 2023. During this phase of testing, users will not be redirected away from chroniclingamerica.loc.gov and will hopefully not notice any difference. Users who do notice any errors or a significant lag in response time should contact [email protected] and consider working directly in the new Chronicling America interface. Stay tuned to this page for more updates.

Announcing the Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers 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 from the legacy Chronicling America interface to a new Chronicling America interface and back-end search infrastructure.

By the end of 2024, visitors going to chroniclingamerica.loc.gov will be re-directed to the new Chronicling America website, which will continue to provide free access to historic digitized newspapers. The exact date will be announced in the coming months on this page, on the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers email list, and also added to the home pages on both versions of the Chronicling America website. More information on how and what URLs will be redirected will be forthcoming. The current version of the website will be officially sunset later in 2024.

Users are encouraged to begin using the new Chronicling America website for research. A Research Guide on using Chronicling America in the new environment is also available.

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 will include faceted browse options (refine searches by ethnicity, location, subject, language, etc.), improved image viewing, improved Advanced Search form options, and more. The new interface also allows users to browse digitized titles in a map. Uploads to the new interface are now automated so you may notice that there are more pages available in the new interface than the longstanding version of Chronicling America.

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.

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.

Please send feedback about the new website to [email protected] and subscribe to the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers email list for more updates.

Last Updated: 10/09/2024