>> Nathan Yarasavage:
Hello everyone, and welcome
from the Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C.
My name is Nathan Yarasavage from
the National Digital Newspaper Program
at the Library of Congress,
home of the Chronicling America
Historic Newspapers online collection.
I'll be your host today for the webinar
on using Chronicling America
for National History Day,
with a focus on this year's theme
of Rights and Responsibilities.
Now, as many of you know,
Chronicling America is a website
hosted at the Library of Congress,
now containing over 22 million
pages of digitized U.S. newspapers
ranging from 1756 to 1963.
Chronicling America is the product of
the National Digital Newspaper Program,
sponsored jointly by
the Library of Congress
and the National Endowment
for the Humanities.
Students have used Chronicling America
for the National History Day contest
for many years now, and
we look forward to another year
of supporting this important program.
We're very excited to have such
a great turnout today for
today's presentation, and
before I introduce our speakers
for today's session, I'd like
to share with you all some
general housekeeping information.
First off, please use the Q and A panel
to ask questions
throughout the presentation.
We may end up
answering your questions
directly in the panel for
everyone to see, or we may
save them till the end.
And secondly, this presentation
is being recorded and will be
made available on the Library
of Congress's event page and
YouTube account in the coming months.
Finally, the slides for today's
presentation are available now
in PDF format from the National
Digital Newspaper Program website,
and you can find a link
to that directly in the chat
and in one of the Q and A's.
And finally, before we get started,
if you haven't already,
consider answering
our one poll question,
how did you hear about this event?
If you can answer that poll
question for us, it will help us
promote events in the future.
You'll likely find the poll
buttons at the bottom of your
Zoom window.
So with that said, allow me
to introduce our speakers for
today's webinar.
Amber Paranick is a reference librarian
in the Serial and Government
Publications Division,
which is the area of
the library that is
home to the
Chronicling America collection.
Our other speaker is Mike Saelee,
a digital conversion specialist
also from the Serial and
Government Publications Division,
where he also works with
Chronicling America as part of
the National Digital
Newspaper Program team.
Mike will be speaking first,
so I'll turn it over to you, Mike,
to get us started.
>> Mike Saelee: Hello, I'm Mike Saelee,
and I'm a digital conversion specialist
here at the library. Today
we will be talking about
Chronicling America as a resource
for National History Day research,
while highlighting some tips and
resources using historical newspapers.
National History Day is a year
long academic program focused on
historic research.
It began in the 1970s as a
contest where students focused
on project topics aimed at a
theme in order to reinforce
the historic importance of
the topic in shaping history.
The theme is intentionally
broad and allows students to
select topics from any place
local, national or global, and
any period in history.
National History Day has grown
to become a multi-level contest
from the county to
state to national level.
So we'll start by looking at
this year's theme, which is
Rights and Responsibilities in History.
To right of this slide
is a cartoon image
from the Tabor City Tribune
from North Carolina about
rights and responsibilities.
It captures the relationship between
both rights and responsibilities.
At the top, it mentions some of the
fundamental rights like freedom
of speech, press, religion and
assembly as the fundamentals
of our democracy.
At the same time, it notes,
we have the responsibility of
making sure that we do not
transgress the rights of others.
This interrelated connection
between rights and
responsibilities is
related to the theme.
According to the official
National History Day website,
the key to the theme of rights
and responsibilities is
addressing both rights
and responsibilities.
These are two powerful forces in
history, but one does not work
without the other.
But what are rights and
responsibilities?
Separately, rights can be
defined as legal, social or
ethical principles of
freedom of privileges that
belong to individuals and society.
They can be expressed
through law, through the legal
system, social convention,
or ethical theory.
On the other hand,
responsibilities are obligations
and expectations of individuals
in society, such as obeying the law,
respecting the rights of others,
or making morally sound
choices and decisions.
That said, select the topic
that addresses both parts of the
theme can be a bit difficult.
First, we recommend narrowing
down general topics to general
ideas or topics, or by time periods.
Second, the topic must address
both components of the theme,
have a variety of potential
resources, and have historical impact.
The last step is to develop
a historical argument or
thesis on the topic that
explains the significance of the
topic in relationship to the theme.
Act as a roadmap for the project.
Make a disputable claim
and lastly be supported by
historical evidence.
So here's an example of how
we would brainstorm the topic
selection process.
First, we start at the
top with time periods.
Under each time periods we add
rights related topics or events
related to that time period.
This can be useful for
contextualizing what occurred
before, during, and after
each topic slash event.
It can also help organize and inspire
new and related research topics.
From there, we recommend
tying the topics of
rights with responsibilities
while posing research questions
you'd like to explore and
address, like what rights were
addressed, who were affected,
who was responsible, were people
and the rights being protected or
violated, and was their justification?
And so here's an example
of brainstorming related
to the topic of the Pure Food
and Drug Act of 1906, and how it
relates to rights and
responsibilities. This act was
signed by President Theodore
Roosevelt in 1906, which
prohibited the addition of any
ingredient that would substitute
for food, conceal damage, pose
a health hazard, or constitute a
filthy/decomposed substance.
In terms of rights and who were
being affected, we can see this
topic relates to consumer
protection and affects everyone
in the United States at the time.
We can also see that
government intervention through
the signing of the act.
Um, it shows the government
being the responsible party by
forcing companies and producers
to adhere to health and
sanitation standards.
That said, if we were
interested in applying this
topic to the theme and create a
thesis, we may have to explore
research questions related
to the justification of the
government, why federal
intervention was required,
why businesses couldn't
self-regulate, and was there a
necessity for this act?
And possibly what historical
events, products or instances
could have led to the necessity
for this act to be signed?
That said, the research of
primary and secondary resources
is needed to help create an
argument and support the thesis.
Today's presentation is about
using historical newspapers,
so we'd like to emphasize and
recommend historic newspapers as
the source for as one of your
sources for your research.
In dealing with historic
newspapers, we'll first begin by
defining them and differentiating
primary and secondary resources.
Then we'll explain
some of the issues in using
historical newspapers and some
of our tips and suggestions
to alleviate these issues.
So what are historical newspapers?
Historical newspapers are newspapers
published between the
17th to the mid 20th century.
They are known as the first
draft of US history as recorded
in the press.
Furthermore, they reflect the
language and attitudes of their time.
As a result, they may
contain bias, offensive and
outdated words and images
that may be hurtful to particular
groups or people.
The distinction between using
historical resources as primary
and secondary sources is
sometimes not as straightforward
as it may seem.
A source may be considered
primary in one research context,
but secondary in another.
For newspapers,
primary sources are created by
people at the time of the event.
They may provide conflicting
perspectives, accounts or
opinions. They are essential
for understanding an event or
time period because they were
created by people who
experienced it.
Likewise, secondary sources are
created by people who did not
participate in the event.
They use and cite primary
sources and are historical
research. Secondary sources are
generally scholarly books and
articles. They help build
historical research from
multiple perspectives and
provide historical research contexts.
For research purposes, both primary and
secondary sources play
essential parts in providing
perspective and analysis on a topic.
That said, analyze your sources
before you decide on their
selection to use for your arguments.
Good research should contain a
variety of primary and secondary
sources, and newspapers can be
a really rich resource to use.
However, before committing
yourself to using an article,
first analyze it and ask
yourself if it comes from a
reliable source.
If it has relevance to your
topic, whose perspective or
opinion it is presenting, and
question if there are missing or
excluded perspectives.
Analyzing each newspaper
article forces you to continue
looking for additional sources
to help support your argument,
and can help you find
the most effective sources
to present for your thesis.
Unfortunately, there are some
issues with historic newspapers.
For common issues include,
first, the historic vocabulary.
This means words can change
over time and you may not find
what you are looking for unless
you use the correct vocabulary.
Current terms and terms used in
the past may yield different results.
Also, different regions
may refer to events,
names, and places differently.
Secondly, there may be
difficulty in identifying
authors and their perspective
because most bylines in historic
newspaper articles are not present.
Third, articles written in the
moments may sometimes have
incomplete information or statistics.
A topic spanning multiple days
will require more research
analysis to ensure
information is correct.
Sometimes newspapers will post
corrections to their articles,
sometimes they won't.
And lastly, opinions about
opposing parties may not be
fully accurate.
May not be fully or
accurately represented.
For example, newspapers written
for and by various ethnic or
labor groups will focus on
their audience and their
concerns rather than those
of the general public.
So here are some ways to deal
with issues with newspapers.
First, we recommend
establishing context and
reminding yourself the
newspaper article came from a
particular time and space in history.
Consider what was
happening politically, socially,
economically, or culturally,
and if any of that could relate
to the newspaper article,
potential bias of the newspaper,
or how people, events
and ideas were portrayed.
Second, read articles that ran
several days after the event
happened. As more information
becomes available and seek
articles from different
newspaper titles.
Third, use additional types of sources,
including secondary sources,
to establish historical
context and validate
numbers and statistics.
Now let's transition to a more
in-depth look on how to use
Chronicling America, a digital
collection of historical newspapers,
with my colleague Amber Paranick.
>> Amber Paranick:
Thank you, Nathan and Mike.
Chronicling America is one tool
that students and educators can
use to examine how rights and
responsibilities have played out
in our national history.
Chronicling America allows
users to search and view over
22 million digitized newspaper
pages from 1756 to 1963, and
find information about
American newspapers using
the National Digital
Newspaper Program, NDNP.
Now, the digitized content
includes newspapers in
28 languages in addition to
English, and has contributions
from all 50 states, including the
District of Columbia, Puerto Rico,
and the US Virgin Islands.
Chronicling America is found on
Chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.
The long standing website has
been converted to a new digital
collection format, including a
brand new interface and back end
search infrastructure.
We will maintain both sites until 2024.
Here's a side by side image
of the new and old interfaces.
Notice the red banner directing
you to the new version.
And the new Chronicling
America interface,
a simple basic search is
available at the top of every page
within this digital collection.
Note that this collection is
automatically populated in the
top search bar on the
About This Collection page.
Let's have a look at a way to
do a basic, simple search using
the example of the Smith Fest
Act, which was also known as the
National Civilian Vocational
Rehabilitation Act, which
established the Civilian
Vocational Rehabilitation Program
and the first federally funded program
to assist disabled civilians.
The program expanded the
1918 Soldier's Rehabilitation Act,
which provided matching federal funds
to states for primarily
vocational services such as
guidance, training,
occupational adjustment,
prosthetics, and placement services.
You can search for specific
keywords and limit your search
by state, publication and date
range from 1756 to 1963.
The basic search returns all
supported languages, and the
results listed first are the
most likely relevant to your search.
Results will appear higher
in the list when they
contain exact matches of your
search terms, more of your
search terms, repeated search terms
and terms that occur near each other.
Typing Smith-Fess Act into the search
field will bring up many results.
And here's an example of what
your results page will look like.
A couple of things to
point out from this screen.
The keyword search terms are
highlighted, making it easy to
spot the match.
The newspaper's title appears
at the top along with the
institution that provided
the microfilm used to
create the digital file.
The citation or persistent
or permanent link
appears at the bottom of the page.
The default search is relevance,
but you can change
that to date, title or state. Pages
with fewer words per page
will likely rank higher.
When you search or browse a topic,
you will see a list of issues or pages.
You will be then taken to the image
viewer when you click on any
page image. The image viewer
allows you to interact with the
newspaper page.
Here is one of the results
of a basic or simple search
I performed using the word 'rights.'
The page is from the newspaper
The Voice, published
in Lincoln, Nebraska.
A couple of things to point
out from this screen.
The keyword search terms are
highlighted and the newspapers,
again, title appears at the top
and you can see the permanent link
will appear at the top of the page.
And now I'll go into a bit more
about navigating around the
newspaper page.
The new search interface offers
more options to view and
manipulate newspaper pages
than the old version.
The latest image viewer
provides the same features as
the old one, but the components
are in different locations.
The second button on the top
bar shows the image alongside
the text. The text is also called
Optical Character Recognition
or OCR, because that's
the automated process
through which it is created.
OCR is not perfect for historical text.
Viewing the text in case of errors
may be conducive so
you can refine your search terms.
The third tab shows
the PDF of the page.
A page selection drop down menu
allows you to go directly to
a particular page in the
newspaper, which is helpful
if there are a lot
of pages in an issue.
You can also navigate between
pages using the blue backward
and forward arrow buttons.
This is helpful when an article
is continued onto the next page.
You can navigate between pages
using the white arrows on either
side of the image in the image
and image with text views, but
that is not available in the PDF view.
You can also navigate between
issues using the second set of
blue backward and forward
arrows, or click all issues
to be taken to the calendar
view of issues.
The view menu will allow you to view
a single image, a list of images,
list of the images, a gallery
or grid or slideshow.
Each view may be suitable
for different purposes.
For example, single image will
provide the best view if you are
reading a particular article.
If you're browsing a newspaper
issue to see which pages contain
a specific section, such as the
sports section, either gallery
or grid might work better.
Six buttons appear under the view menu.
The Go Home menu button
recenters the page.
The negative sign and plus sign
allow you to zoom in and out.
You can also zoom in and out of
the image using a mouse or
trackpad on your computer.
The Rotate Right button allows
you to rotate a page if there is
a sideways text on a page for
easier reading, and the toggle
full page button enlarges the
viewer to your whole screen,
which is helpful for enlarged
viewing without too much zooming
or for presenting a page,
such as in a classroom.
Once you are in the full page
view, this button is replaced
with a button to undo the full page.
You can also click the escape button
on your computer keyboard.
And there are two ways to
save an image for future use.
Using a result from a search
about the Food and Drug Act,
you can see that the
download option from the
drop down menu is selected.
This option only appears
in the single image view.
You can choose which file
you prefer to download.
This will save the whole page image
or the whole page of OCR text.
An exciting feature of the
new image viewer is that
it allows you to save an image clip
more precisely than the old interface.
Click on the scissor icon
and draw a box around the
portion of the page you want to clip.
You will see a clip image box pop up.
Click this box. If you want to redo it,
you can click the X beside the
clip image and simply redraw
your box. You can also use
the edges of the clip border to
adjust the size of the clip.
You will then be taken to
a page with the clip and the
information about the newspaper
title and page where it came from.
This page will allow you to print
or download the clip and information.
Under the image,
if you click on share, you will
be provided with three different
links that allow you to share
or embed the clip, or the full page
image in a web page.
The Advanced Search is helpful
when you are looking for
specific topics and want to
narrow the search results.
It provides more control and search
options compared to the basic search.
Click on the Collection Items
tab to access the new
Advanced Search. It will automatically
open, and then you'll click on
the minus button to minimize it, and
the plus button to make it reappear.
The four options from the
old search interface have been
combined into one search
box in the new interface.
Select the pages Full Text
Radio button, and then choose
one of the options from the all
of these words drop down menu.
All of these words,
any of these words, this exact
phrase, these words within
five words of each other or these
words within ten words of each other.
Next, type your keywords into the box.
You can add additional fields
and combine keywords and phrases.
You can also narrow
results by location, title,
language, or date, and then you can
press enter to select the search icon.
Advanced search allows for limiting
results to again title image issues
or full text pages.
And you can also again use
those various keyword options.
And recommendations on
using the advanced search.
If you want to limit your
search to a particular
geographic area, select one or more
states. To refine search results,
broaden or narrow the
possibilities by using
different combinations of keywords.
You can add multiple fields by
clicking on the Plus Add field.
You can limit your search to a
particular newspaper or select
several newspapers from
the list of titles currently
available in Chronicling America.
Note that surrounding
your search terms by quotation
marks with all of these words is
the equivalent of searching
this exact phrase with the same
term or terms without quotation marks.
For example, if you want to
search only German language
newspapers from Pennsylvania,
select Pennsylvania from the
state or province drop down
menu and only Pennsylvania
titles will appear...
in the title field.
And you can also narrow the new
advanced search by ethnicities
such as African American, German or
Polish, and narrow your search by date.
In this instance, I again
selected German under both
language and ethnicity.
Search faceting is a new
feature that allows you to
refine your search and narrow
or expand your search results
without starting a new search.
This can be especially helpful
if you are looking for
articles about a person and
already knows some essential
dates of when a person
lived in a place, or the dates of
significant milestones which can
then help you narrow your search.
A faceted search also works
well if you are searching
for a specific topic, but do
not know where to start your
search. You can pass it by
newspaper title, date, state or
province, county, city,
ethnicity, language, subject or
newspaper page which is
applicable if you are interested
in front page coverage and more.
I'll show you how this feature
works, and I'll use the example
of Alice Paul, a suffragist,
feminist, and political
strategist for women's
equality, as well as the
organizer of confrontational
protests in support of the
19th Amendment to the US Constitution.
She founded the National
Women's Party in 1916 and
authored the Equal Rights
Amendment in 1923.
To perform an advanced search
for newspaper articles about her,
you can start with a full text
search of her name with the
words within five words of each other.
I did this search a few days
ago, and the results came to
more than 14,000 pages, which
are too many to count or review.
Please note that this number
will change if you come back to
a search that you performed
previously, as we are adding
more content to the collection.
You might then be interested in
learning more about contemporary
art accounts written when the
19th amendment was passed.
Instead of doing a new search,
you can use the left hand date
facets to select the 1920s,
which results in 3492 pages, and
then refine your search by year
if you chose just 1920,
resulting in 1434 pages.
If your search is too narrow,
you can select the X next to
this facet to remove
that search criteria.
And if your search generates
too many results, try using more
specific terms and limiting to
a specific state of publication
or a particular newspaper title.
You can also use a combination
of search box options
to narrow your results.
If a search generates too few
results, try alternate or
broader subjects and relax any
limiting criteria such as date ranges
or state limitations.
Keep in mind that headlines are
used in different ways today,
and sometimes a significant
news event will be on the second
page of a newspaper issue.
You may not want to limit your
search to only front page images.
Going back to the example
of the Alice Paul search,
I wanted to limit the results
further by selecting
only articles from the Maryland
Suffrage News weekly newspaper,
which was founded in Baltimore
in 1912 by Edith Houghton Hooker
as the voice of the
Just Government League,
The JGL of Maryland.
The JGL was a pro women's
suffrage organization that she
founded in 1909.
You can read more about the
history of a newspaper such as
this one by clicking on the linked
title above the digitized page.
These newspaper histories
or essays created by the
National Digital Newspaper
Program participants, provide
context by telling the story of
the newspapers selected for
digitization and how they fit
into the state's history.
These essays also include
information about the
newspaper's owner and political
bias, allowing students to
hypothesize about who wrote an
article and why they wrote it,
even if individual articles
are uncredited.
And you can also browse all
available digitized newspaper issues
in the calendar view and discover
where you can find additional holdings
not currently included
in the collection
if you click on the
libraries that have it, tabs.
And proximity searching narrows your
results by specifying which weather
keywords are next to you,
near to, or within a given distance
from one another.
Proximity searches are useful
when searching historical
newspapers, because you might
want to search an exact phrase
such as a place name
or a landmark quote.
Or you might want to use broader
search criteria because you are
uncertain about how a newspaper
printed a phrase such as a
person's name.
And let's do a proximity search
using the example of the March
on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom on August 28th, 1963,
an estimated 25,000 people
attended the march, and it was
the largest gathering for civil
rights of its time, arriving in
Washington, D.C. by planes,
trains, cars and buses from
all over the country.
This event focused on
employment discrimination,
civil rights abuses against
disenfranchised groups, and
support for the Civil Rights
Act that President Kennedy was
attempting to pass through Congress.
This momentous display of civil
activism occurred on the National Mall.
The original idea of the march
came from A. Philip Randolph,
who was a labor organizer
and founder of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
and the Negro American Labor Council.
To do a proximity search on
the new interface, click on the
Collection Items tab and click the
plus button next to Advanced Search.
For example, if you want
to search for the March on
Washington, but aren't sure if
newspapers printed the full name,
we recommend searching for
the using the keywords
March Washington using these
words within five words of each other,
and you'd likely want to limit
to coverage from 1963.
And just a reminder that the
coverage in Chronicling America
currently stops at 1963.
So it would be impossible
to find newspaper
articles published after that
within the collection at the moment.
If you want to search
for articles about Philip Randolph
and the March, we recommend
using the keywords
March Randolph and use the
All of These Words option,
since they may not be located
near each other in an
article or on a page.
You can use the search and end
results and dates to narrow your
results to a more specific time period.
In this case, I limited to the
week before and after the march.
You can further sort the results by
date or use the left side Date facet.
The default view is gallery,
but you can change that to list,
grid or slideshow.
To read more about the March
from the perspective of
African American newspapers,
facet your search by ethnicity
African American, which
results in seven pages.
And please always cite your sources.
It gives credit to the source
of your information.
Chronicling America makes
it incredibly easy to cite your
sources. On the bottom of every
about this newspaper or about
this item page, there will
be a site this item button.
Select it to see the title
citation in three formats.
Chicago Citation Style, APA Citation
Style, and MLA Citation Style.
For instance, to cite this
Northwest Enterprise
newspaper article about Randolph
from December 13th, 1944,
simply copy the citation below
the newspaper image, paste it,
and you're done.
The all digitized newspaper,
all digitized titles page rather
will help you view and
facet all the titles in
chronicling America by state,
ethnicity, and language,
and choose multiple selections
within each drop down menu.
The list is available in the
third tab on each collection
page, and you can also sort the
title column in ascending or
descending order.
The list displays the newspaper
title state a link to browse issues.
The number of newspaper
issues currently available in
Chronicling America.
Dates for the earliest
and latest issues.
A link to the newspaper title
history essay and the language
and ethnicity for each newspaper.
You can download a copy of the
whole list or faceted portion.
For example, if you want to see
which titles are in Chronicling America
from Colorado, you can select
that state from the down menu.
You can further choose
to facet by ethnicity,
such as Jewish titles,
ethnicity and language facets
automatically update based on
the availability of each state.
Like with the search faceting,
you can also clear filters.
Chronicling America's new
interface allows you to browse
newspaper titles by
their location on a map.
Have you ever completed
research in one newspaper title
in Chronicling America, and
then wondered if there may be
other digitized newspapers in
a nearby city, county, or across
the border, and another state
that you could search as well?
Well, the map view will allow you
to find those additional newspapers.
There are two different
ways to access the map view,
and the first option is to select
the all Digitized Titles tab
under the Chronicling
America banner, and
then click View all Titles on a map.
Once you've selected this
option, a new page will open
displaying the map and a
list of facets on the left.
You can narrow your view to a
specific region, state, county,
or city. To do this, you can
use the plus and minus signs
in the top right corner to zoom
in and out, and your mouse to
control which area you want
to see within the viewer.
You can also refine your
results by selecting facets
along the left hand side,
such as a specific state or county,
or maybe ethnicity or language.
You can also access the map
through the Advanced Search option
in Chronicling America.
Select the Titles Radio button
and then scroll down to the
view drop down menu and
select Map Titles only and go.
Once the map has opened in the
viewer, you can manually zoom in
and out and narrow down what
you'd like to view by selecting
the facets on the left.
National History Day
researchers may want to narrow
their search to newspapers from
a particular ethnic community or
language for their projects,
and even narrow it to
other digital collections.
Previously, more specific
digital newspaper collections
were searchable through
the library's website at
loc/newspapers/collections.
Now, you can search all
digitized newspapers through the
search box in the top right
hand corner of the landing page,
or search collections individually.
Additional collections include
the Frederick Douglass
newspapers, Japanese American
Internment Camp newspapers,
New York Journal, and related titles.
Stars and stripes, the American
Soldiers newspaper of
World War I, World War history,
newspaper clippings and the
newspaper pictorials,
World War I Rotogravure collections.
An excellent jumping off point
for student researchers, and
another way to explore the
collections content is the
topics in Chronicling America
Guide, which can be found at
guides.loc.gov
/Chronicling-America-topics.
This page gathers our topical
guides that tell various stories
of America through the
newspapers available in
Chronicling America.
When creating these guides, we
include newspapers nationwide to
showcase a broader
perspective on a particular topic.
The additional external guides
feature links to some state and
local research guides created
by the National Digital Newspaper
program state partners.
If you don't find a subject that
we should add, just let us know.
These guides can be searched
alphabetically by date range
or conflict and subject.
These guides will include
a list of important dates,
suggested search terms and strategies,
and links to sample articles.
Please note that these are not
exhaustive research guides.
Given that we are continually
adding additional content to
Chronicling America and
the results you will get
using the keywords
may change over time.
The Themes and History
tab aligns with the
National History Day
competition annual themes.
There are collections related
to national monthly observances
and Heritage months.
You'll find quite a variety of examples
here organized by date range,
monthly observances and
celebrations, subjects, themes
and history, as well
as wars and conflicts.
And there's also a generic
alphabetical list of topics
pages with the complete list,
and we're adding ones all the time.
Under Rights and Responsibilities,
we can find a guide
called Crystal Eastman:
Topics in Chronicling America.
Crystal Eastman was a leading
suffragette, lawyer, and
activist and formed the American
Civil Liberties Union in 1920.
As newspapers use historical language,
searching for modern terms
can also often thwart searchers.
This search strategies and
selected articles page offers
suggestions for other keywords,
such as Adams Benedict Commission,
Eastman Peace, and
Wilson to help identify
applicable articles about Crystal
Eastman in Chronicling America.
A timeline can also help
students narrow searches to
relevant date ranges.
And if you've completely
forgotten everything we talked
:about today, the Chronicling America
A guide for researchers guide
assist patrons in using
Chronicling America.
The introduction tab provides
background information on
Chronicling America, links to the
collection, and other resources,
such as guides and visualizations,
About the collection,
provides additional content
on Chronicling America
scope and coverage,
and how newspapers are
selected to be digitized.
We've provided helpful
tips highlighting where
some of your favorite tools
have moved in the new interface.
I also wanted to point out that
Race and Ethnicity Keyword Thesaurus,
which serves as a guide
to searching topics of
race and ethnicity in
Chronicling America, including words,
lists of words used in the
past that might help produce
more results and strategies
for navigating the database.
When using this resource,
remember that historical
newspapers, like all primary
documents from the past, use the
language of the time they were
written, which may include terms
considered offensive today.
While efforts have been made to
include and increase the ethnic
press content in Chronicling
America, most of the newspapers
currently in the database are
in English and are produced by
white publishers and editors.
Identifying keywords can be
particularly challenging when
searching for news
about race and ethnicity.
Much of the language describing
such communities has evolved and
changed throughout the centuries,
and its meanings may
vary depending on who is using
the terms and the context in
which they are used.
In this iteration, this source
is intended to primarily assist
researchers in identifying
terms related to race and
ethnicity in the
English language press.
Researchers should be mindful
that race and ethnicity do not
exist independently, but
intersect with other aspects of
society like community size,
class, and gender.
Please visit the Chronicling
America website migration page
or subscribe to the Chronicling
America Historical Newspapers
email list for updates.
We invite you to have a look
at the newspaper and current
periodical Reading Room's
website, where you can get
assistance through our
Ask a Librarian service,
phone and chat.
If you need help, please contact us,
a librarian will gladly assist you.
Whether you need an 18th century
newspaper, a comic book,
or yesterday's headlines, the reading
room and the reference staff there
have you covered.
The reading room is located on the
first floor of the Madison Building
and room 133.
In addition to stopping by
in person, you can write to our
reference librarians and
specialists at Ask.loc.gov or
call us at (202)?707-5690.
Thank you. And back to Nathan.
>> Nathan Yarasavage: Thank you, Amber,
for the fantastic demo on the new
Chronicling America site and
the other great resources
we have for students and educators
at the Library of Congress.
And thank you, Mike, for your
outstanding overview of
this year's National History Day theme.
With that, we are now at
the end of our event today.
We really appreciate you all
joining and we hope to see you
at a future event.
Thanks again and have a
great rest of your day.