Voices and Viewpoints in Chronicling America: Uses of Historical News for Education and Outreach

Abstract

With over 10 million historical newspaper pages now available, the U.S. National Digital Newspaper Program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities, has a robust online archive that spurs varying educational uses. From teacher workshops to personal interest blogs, the content available through Chronicling America: American Historic Newspapers (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ ) is re-used in a variety of ways to enhance access to the cultural viewpoints and historic voices represented in the archive. These uses are supported by the principles of open and persistent access using standard data interchange formats incorporated into the technical infrastructure of the site, as well as the program model. Many of the institutions involved have developed outreach activities based on the online content. By promoting use of the content through more channels than any one institution could manage, overall awareness and re-use of the material grows, leveraging each institution’s investment.