Chronicling America Has New Features

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Screenshot shows the default view of the new "Exploring Chronicling America Newspapers" interactive map and timeline [1]






Somehow this week I received a copy of the Library of Congress blog, The Signal, in which I found the news about this new feature at Chronicling America. I had not subscribed to this blog before but I certainly will now!  Perhaps you might find it useful as well:   https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/





Interactive Map and Timeline


This interactive map of newspapers in the Chronicling America digital library will be a tremendous help in finding the newspapers in your neck of the woods.  Just click on a dot near the area in which you are searching and you get a pop-up with the name of the town and newspapers published in that area.  Neat!








Clicking on the underlined text will take you directly to the issues where you may browse or, with the title of the available newspapers, you can do a search by name or phrase.  Not all states are included; this is a work in progress so check back often.



Are you new to Chronicling America?


Perhaps you are new to this site or haven't explored it fully.  Here is a brief introduction to the main page with some suggestions of things to look at.  Don't miss the information at the bottom of this blog about a video on how to use Chronicling America.



Some Basic Background


Chronicling America provides access to millions of historic American newspaper pages digitized through the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Program partners select and contribute digitized newspapers published in their states or territories, creating the national collection. All of the newspapers are in the public domain and have no known copyright restrictions. To facilitate a wide range of potential uses of the newspaper data, in addition to providing the ability to search and browse historic newspaper pages on the web, Chronicling America offers a well-documented application programming interface (API). For over a decade, researchers and scholars have used the API to interface with Chronicling America data leading to a variety of projects based on digitized historical newspapers.[2]










US Newspaper Directory


Don't know the name of a paper in your area of research?  Search this page for names and dates of newspapers published in the United States.  Libraries are listed that have hard copy or microfilm of the original issues. 



About the Site and API


While most of us feel confident enough to jump into the Search functions at this point, we would probably gain some good pointers by reading over the information on this page.



Maps and Visualizations


This is where you access the new feature; just go to "View the interactive map" located just above the map.




Other Neat Stuff at Library of Congress

I discovered Story Maps at the main LOC site and am astounded by the wealth of information, and ingenious modes of presentation, at the Story Map site.  Watch for a future blog on this topic alone.  Meanwhile, at LOC.gov search for "story maps geography" to get the following page.  Select the Story Maps web page.




In addition, since 2018, under a program spearheaded by the Geography and Map Division, collection specialists from across the Library of Congress have produced Story Maps about the hidden and not-so-hidden collections of the Library. Also created within the Esri Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform, Story Maps combines text, images, multimedia, and interactive maps featuring Library collections to create immersive online experiences, placing the collections in context around a central theme.

The Library is continuing to explore new ArcGIS tools, such as Instant Apps and Dashboards, to publish and visualize its massive collections.[3]


From the 2022 files I enjoyed Illustrating History: Art and Law in the Women's Suffrage Movement, and from the 2018 files I was impressed by Camera and Locomotive, a study of the parallel history of photography and the transcontinental railroad.


Library of Congress Video


Did you hear a loud "Whoop" on Facebook the other day?  That was Judy G. Russell (The Legal Genealogist) sharing the information: 

 

Finding Your Family in Newspapers: Using Chronicling America for Genealogical Research

Date and Location

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Discover your family’s past through the newspapers of their present. Join Digital Conversion Specialist Henry Carter to learn how to search for ancestors in Chronicling America, a free digital collection of almost 20 million pages from American newspapers published between 1777 and 1963. The presentation will discuss the collection, the search interface, and how to navigate the challenges of working with historic newspapers. Chronicling America is jointly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.



I hope this information is helpful and you have lots of success using this marvelous resource.


MaryLynn Strickland 



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