Chronicling America, the free, online searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers, has posted its 10 millionth page.
We now have 10,000,000 reasons to use the Library of Congress’ searchable newspaper collection at Chronicling America. I’m sure most genealogists have used this collection at least once, but do you ever go back to see if new material has been added? It might be a good idea now that they have reached 10 million pages.
I like newspapers for various reasons, the first is obvious – to see what my notorious ancestors were up to! But also, to check what the weather was like at a particular place and time, to see the fashions my ancestors might have worn (or simply wished they could afford or even laughed at, it’s fun to work out which ancestor might have which reaction). Some of my ancestors were only in the newspapers when the county fair came around – but in a rural setting where county fairs were taken seriously, this still tells me something about their lives. And if you follow them for a few years you tend to see who their rivals were – I like to check out those families in the census (especially the agricultural census) just to see who was really better!
The Library of Congress issued a press release for this milestone and I confess, I have never checked the foreign language papers, but I will now.
Chronicling America Facts
- The site now features more than 10 million pages – 74 terabytes of total data – from more than 1,900 newspapers in 38 states and territories and the District of Columbia.
- Between January and December 2014, the site logged 3.8 million visits and 41.7 million page views;
- The resource includes more than 285,000 pages in almost 100 non-English newspapers (French, German, Italian and Spanish);
- More than 250 Recommended Topics pages have been created, offering a gateway to exploration for users at any level. Topics include presidential assassinations, historic events such as the sinking of the Titanic, inventions, famous individuals such as the Wright Brothers and cultural or off-beat subjects like fashion trends, ping-pong and world’s fairs;