The following is a guest post by Kerry Huller, a Digital Conversion Specialist in the Serial and Government Publications Division.
Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy interface to a new interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it.
Through its enhanced search interface, the new Chronicling America offers more options to search the collection, as well as the ability to browse newspapers through the “All Digitized Titles” list and a new map interface.
In the new interface, the “All Digitized Titles” list is available by clicking on the third tab under the black Chronicling America banner. On this page, you can view and filter all the titles in Chronicling America by state, ethnicity, and language, and choose multiple selections within each drop-down menu. You can also sort the title column by ascending or descending order. The list displays the newspaper title with the years of publication, the state, a link to browse digitized issues, the number of issues currently available in Chronicling America, dates for the earliest and latest issues in Chronicling America, a link to the newspaper title history essay and the language and ethnicity for each newspaper.
For example, if you’re interested in seeing which titles are in Chronicling America from Colorado, you can select that state from the drop-down menu, then click on the “Apply Filters” button. You can further choose to facet by ethnicity, such as African American titles. The ethnicity and language facets automatically update based on the availability for each state. You can clear the filters if you want to start over as well.
Downloading a TXT or CSV file
There is an additional option to download the “All Digitized Titles” list as a CSV or TXT file. To do so, go to the “Download” drop-down menu at the top right. There you can download the entire list or your filtered search results. If you want to download the list of newspaper titles from Colorado as a CSV file, first select “Colorado” on the state filter and click “Apply Filters”, then choose “CSV (filtered results)” from the “Download” drop-down menu. And then click on the “Go” button.
The CSV and TXT downloads have additional features that are not visible on the website list. The downloads include unique identifiers for each title if they are available. These identifiers include the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN), Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) number, and International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).
If you download a title list, you might notice that the number of titles in the downloaded file is higher than the count displayed on the website list. This is because some newspapers moved locations over the years and ended up publishing from multiple states. So, the downloaded file will list the newspaper according to each state it was published in.
New Map Interface
Have you completed research in one newspaper title on Chronicling America, and then wondered if there may be other digitized newspapers in a nearby city, neighboring county, or across the border in another state that you could search too? Well, the map view will allow you to find those additional newspapers.
There are two different ways to access the map view. The first option is to select the “All Digitized Titles” tab, and then click on “View all Titles on a Map.”
Once you’ve selected this option, a new page will open displaying the map and a list of facets on the left.
From here, you can narrow down your view to a specific region, state, county, or city. To do this, you can use the plus and minus buttons in the top right corner or your mouse to zoom in and out. You can also refine your results by selecting facets along the left-hand side, such as a specific state and county, or maybe an ethnicity or language.
In the example below, the map is zoomed into the point where Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet. The blue dots indicate the location of either a single newspaper title or multiple titles that are available on Chronicling America.
You can browse what titles are available in a region by clicking on the blue dots. If you select the dot representing Harpers Ferry, WV, you can see that four newspapers published in that city are available on Chronicling America. The four titles also appear in a list below the map, and you can navigate directly to the title’s record by clicking on the newspaper’s name or browse available issues by clicking on “digitized content available.”
You can also access the map through the Advanced Search option on Chronicling America. Select the “Titles” button, and then scroll down to the “View” drop-down menu and select “Map (Titles Only),” and “Go.” Once the map has opened in the viewer, you can either manually zoom in and out, or narrow down what you’d like to view by selecting from the facets on the left.
As new titles are added to Chronicling America, the “All Digitized Titles” list and interactive map are updated as well.
Search Help
To get started using the new Chronicling America interface, be sure to check out our research guide, Chronicling America: A Guide for Researchers. The guide can be found by clicking on the “About this Collection” tab under the Chronicling America black banner, then by clicking on the “Related Resources” tab on the left. The first resource listed in the center of the page is our guide.
If you want to find out what new content has been added to Chronicling America, go to the “Recent Additions to Chronicling America” tab on the guide, where you can find a sortable list of content added since January 2024. The batch name link will take you directly to the content and you can browse the newest newspapers.
You can also reach out to us through the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room where you can get assistance through the Ask a Librarian service, phone, and chat. If you need help, please contact us and a librarian will be glad to answer your questions.
Try out a search in the new Chronicling America interface today!
The Chronicling America historic newspapers online collection is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.