Selected historic newspapers from a number of US states became available in digitized format and free of charge at the launch of this resource in March 2007. All titles are public domain newspapers published between 1900 and 1910. Each is fully searchable via this website maintained by the Library of Congress. At opening day the resource offered 226,000 pages from newspapers and selected information about newspapers. Accompanying the newspaper pages is a national directory of newspapers created earlier by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In its current form, the website serves as a prototype for an ongoing project that will, subject to funding, extend over two decades. On completion chosen titles in print between 1836 and 1922 will be digitized. The finished resource will include newspapers from all states and territories of the USA. Management and control in the creation of this database is under the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Awards were made by NDNP in May 2005 for digitization projects in six states: California, Florida, Kentucky, New York Utah and Virginia. Digitizing was undertaken by University personnel who worked with microfilm collections. The Library of Congress contributed pages from fourteen newspapers published in the District of Columbia. Interestingly, contributors will have input on selection criteria and technical portions of the programme.
Users viewing the homepage have the choice of searching the newspapers or the directory of newspapers. There are also other clickable links for further information including About Chronicling America, Technical, and Awardees (contributors). Construction of a search may be for the exact word(s); any or all of the words in a phrase, or the exact phrase. Lastly, they may search fulltext by looking for words within five words of each other in an article. Limiting a search to a format such as poetry is simply done by searching the format. A Help button and an option to contact the Library of Congress are also located on the initial screen. Options on each newspaper page are to browse issues; read about the newspaper; adjust the page image; view optical character recognition for the page; and download high‐resolution image (JP2), or PDF and HTML images. Screen images are adjustable in quality to a certain extent. Over magnification tends to blur images. This reviewer found that printing images actually provided a more readable copy in some instances. The provider of the image is identified on each page, thus crediting project participants and linking them with specific work.
A contrast noticed at this writing with the Readex American's Historical Newspapers collection (in three series: Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690‐1876; Series II, 1758‐1900 and Series III, 1829‐1922) is the division of the product into marketable units. Readex information online indicates coverage from 23 states and the District of Columbia. The complete series exceeds 1,000 titles. Access and browsing both resources is similar.
This new newspaper resource is highly recommended as a valuable reference tool that offers immediate access to newspapers previously difficult to locate. Historical researchers will not only access this initial database, but should watch its growth and development. The expense and inconvenience of travelling to libraries holding microfilm and/or the rare print copies of these primary resources will be rendered unnecessary. Enthusiastic appreciation among historians, scholars, educators and students over both the free and national access will create much welcome publicity for this project.
