Newspaper Datasets and API Access

Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. To encourage a wide range of potential uses, we designed several different views of the data we provide, all of which are publicly visible. Each uses common Web protocols, and access is not restricted in any way. You do not need to apply for a special key to use them. Together they make up an extensive application programming interface (API) which you can use to explore all of our data in many ways.

All Digitized Titles

Downloadable lists of All Digitized Newspapers can be found on the top right corner of the All Digitized Titles page.

Files come in two formats:

Text file (.txt): Open with any text-based application.
Comma Separated Values file (.csv): Open with spreadsheet application.

Datasets

As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), awardee institutions submit digitized content to the Library of Congress for inclusion in Chronicling America in the form of batches. This term describes the basic unit of data used to deliver digital assets (images and metadata) and can vary in size. A batch can consist of a single or multitude of newspaper titles and issues.

Note: The Datasets tab in the new interface of Chronicling America is still under development. Please visit the Chronicling America Website Migration page for more details. Until further notice, users can continue to access all batch data (except TIFFs) and bulk OCR from the legacy site. The current rate limit per IP address for the legacy site bulk OCR downloads is 10 bulk requests within 10 minutes.

API

Computational access to Chronicling America is provided by the Library of Congress application programming interface (API). The APIs for LoC.gov site describes in detail how the Library makes information available via its JSON API, sitemaps, and suite of microservices. This API is accessible to the public with no API key or authentication required, however, rate limiting is strongly encouraged.

General API Documentation and Tutorials from the Library of Congress

Chronicling America Specific API Tutorials

Using the loc.gov API with the Chronicling America Historic Newspapers Collection
- This repository contains information about using the LoC.gov API with the Chronicling America collection. Additionally there are six (6) Jupyter notebooks designed specifically for using the loc.gov API to access Chronicling America content.

Contacts and Resources

Subscribe to the ChronAm-Users mailing list to pose questions and/or contribute to a community of Chronicling America API and data users.
Contact Library of Congress NDNP staff for general API questions or to discuss access to the API and data for research and scholarship.

Additional Resources

APIs for LoC.gov
This site describes how the Library makes information available via a series of application programming interfaces (APIs). Specifically, it includes technical documentation of the Library's loc.gov JSON API, its sitemaps, and suite of microservices.
Chronicling America Data Visualizations
Chronicling America provides access to millions of digitized historic American newspapers pages. This page includes links and descriptions to several different types of interactive maps, graphs, and charts designed to assist users in better understanding the scope and coverage of newspapers in Chronicling America.
Datasets at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide
Datasets are a structured collections of data generally associated with a unique body of work. This guide provides information about various dataset collections, and suggests sites and resources for data science and machine learning projects.
Digital Scholarship at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide
This research guide has been designed to support people seeking to use the Library of Collections in a digital way, whether that is accessing digital materials, downloading content, using digital tools to present research—like a website—or using other digital methods like computational analysis.

Chronicling America: A Guide for Researchers