This is a guest post by Nathan Yarasavage, a digital projects specialist in the Serial and Government Publications Division. You can find more on the Headlines and Heroes blog.
This week we celebrate an exciting milestone. Chronicling America, the online searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers, now includes more than 15 million pages!
“WHADDYA TALKIN’ ABOUT! THERE’S MILLIONS ‘N BILLIONS….” Evening Star, September 18, 1932.
Since 2005, libraries, historical societies, and other institutions throughout the country have contributed newspapers from their collections to Chronicling America. This process is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a collaborative program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress. To date, we have more than 2800 newspapers from 46 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. To mark the 15 million milestone, we are throwing a #ChronAmParty on Twitter to highlight all of the things to be found in 15 million newspaper pages – from the funny and fantastic to the historically significant!
“Science Finds the Father of the Cat – 15,000,000 Years Old.” The Washington Times, October 17, 1920.
“REPRESENTATIVES OF 15 MILLION POTENTIAL WOMEN VOTERS PRESENT PLANKS AT CHICAGO.” The Washington Herald, June 9, 1920.
We’re also unveiling a set of interactive data visualizations that help reveal the variety of content available in a corpus of 15 million digitized newspaper pages which you can find on this site – Chronicling America Data Visualizations. These data visualizations, which include coverage by time, coverage by state, and coverage by language and ethnic press, were created using Tableau Public. Head over to The Signal tomorrow for a blog post that goes into more detail on Chronicling America and these new tools!
To help celebrate these exciting accomplishments, please join our #15Millionpages #ChronAmParty on May 21st. All throughout the day, NDNP partners will be tweeting what is sure to be an eclectic assortment of content on the theme of #15Millionpages. Follow along and retweet our finds to your own followers or tweet your own discoveries! Just include #ChronAmParty #15Millionpages to join in the fun. Throughout the year, we’ll continue the #ChronAmParty with a changing theme every third Tuesday of the month. We’re looking forward to celebrating with you!
Questions about NDNP or Chronicling America? Contact [email protected]
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