This piece was co-written by my colleague Megan Halsband.
To celebrate the 220th anniversary of its founding, on Friday, April 24, 2020, the Library of Congress is highlighting some of the many gifts and resources we have been able to provide because of your contributions.
Your creativity and knowledge help us build our Web Archiving collections like Webcomics, SPX Web Archive, Comics Literature and Criticism, and General News on the Internet.
Institutions from your state* have helped us to provide access to over 16 million pages (and counting!) in Chronicling America, jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
*Currently 48 states and 2 territories are partners in the National Digital Newspaper Program.
Your time and interest help us build crowdsourcing projects like Beyond Words, an experimental project to enhance access to images in WWI newspapers, which is set to close in June 2020:
We’ve been working hard to digitize more of our collections and make them accessible to you from anywhere you are! Collection highlights include:
Frederick Douglass Newspapers 1847-1874, which presents three newspaper titles edited by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the African American abolitionist who escaped slavery and became one of the most famous orators, authors, and journalists of the 19th century. In-depth looks at this collection are available through two previous blog posts available here and here.
World War I era collections including:
- World War History: Newspaper Clippings 1914-1926
- Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers’ Newspaper of World War I, 1918 to 1919
- Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914 to 1919.
Read more about these collections here, here, and here!
Other online collections include:
- Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942-1946,
- New York Journal and Related Titles, 1896 to 1899
- Department of Defense Annual Reports (1948 to 1996) and Military Branch Budget Justification Books (1980 to 1996)
All of our digital collections can be viewed here. We continue working to build both our online and print materials and make them available to you. Coming soon look for an updated newspaper directory, more web archive materials, and more digitized newspapers in Chronicling America!
Read more about our 220th Birthday: