Quick Digital Research Tip: Using Chronicling America's Advanced Search

Historical newspapers can be valuable sources of information for research projects. Created through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, Chronicling America offers visitors the ability to search and view more than 20 million digitized newspaper pages from 1770 to 1963 and to find information about American newspapers using the National Digital Newspaper Program. This video guides researchers through the advanced search features of the Chronicling America database, including filtering by state, newspaper title, date range, page number, and language, as well as modifying keyword search parameters or searching for an exact phrase. The Quick Digital Research Tip: Using Chronicling America for NHD Research media resource can help researchers familiarize themselves with the basic search tools. 

Questions for Analysis and Comprehension

These questions can be used before viewing the video to brainstorm ideas or after watching as a way to reflect. 

1. What is the difference between a search for any of the words in a list and all of the words in a list? Can you think of examples of when you would want to perform one search versus the other?

2. What is the difference between a search for all of the words in a list and a search for a phrase? Can you think of examples of when you would want to perform one search versus the other?

3. When would it be helpful to use the “with the words” feature to search for multiple words within a set number of words from each other? Can you think of any examples for this kind of search?

This video is one in a series on historical research and writing developed through a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Humanities and National History Day.