Chronicling America

How to Use This API

1. List All Digitized Newspapers

Returns metadata about every newspaper in the collection, including title, place of publication, years, and LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number):

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers.json

2. Search by Keyword and State

Search for articles containing "election" in New York newspapers published in 1912:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=New+York&date1=1912&date2=1912&proxtext=election&format=json

Parameters: proxtext (search term), state, date1/date2 (year range), format=json.

3. JavaScript — Search with Filters

const params = new URLSearchParams({
  proxtext: 'immigration',
  state: 'Illinois',
  date1: '1900',
  date2: '1910',
  format: 'json'
});
fetch('http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?' + params)
  .then(r => r.json())
  .then(data => {
    console.log('Total results:', data.totalItems);
    data.items.forEach(page => {
      console.log(page.title, '-', page.date, '-', page.url);
    });
  });

4. Python — Get OCR Text of a Page

import requests

# First find a newspaper page ID, then get OCR text
page_id = 'sn84026749/1885-06-19/ed-1/seq-1'
ocr = requests.get(
  f'http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/{page_id}/ocr.txt'
).text
print(ocr[:500])  # First 500 chars of transcribed text