Chronicling America

Chronicling America is a Library of Congress initiative providing free public access to a searchable database of historic American newspaper pages from 1770 to 1963. The platform hosts over 20 million digitized newspaper pages from hundreds of US newspapers contributed by institutions in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). The API exposes search, title, issue, batch, and OCR text endpoints with no authentication required, returning responses in JSON and Atom feed formats.

Chronicling America publishes 6 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Batches API, Issues API, OCR API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Newspapers, Historical, Archives, Library of Congress, and Government.

The Chronicling America catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context.

Chronicling America’s developer surface includes documentation and 14 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

42.3/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 32/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-20 · rubric v0.12.0

AccessFreeOpen⚡ Free to try

6 APIs

NewspapersHistoricalArchivesLibrary of CongressGovernmentDigitizedOCRSearchCultural Heritage

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-20 · rubric v0.12.0

Composite quality — 42.3/100 · developing

Contract Quality 12.3 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 1.6 / 17

Access Clarity 8.5 / 17

Operational Transparency 4.1 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 6.3 / 9

Regulatory Posture 6.9 / 15

Agent readiness — 32/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/chroniclingamerica: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 6

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Chroniclingamerica Rate Limits

3 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrg

GitHubOrg

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

Plans

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

About

About

LinkedIn

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Source (apis.yml)

aid: chroniclingamerica
name: Chronicling America
description: Chronicling America is a Library of Congress initiative providing free public access to a searchable database
  of historic American newspaper pages from 1770 to 1963. The platform hosts over 20 million digitized newspaper pages from
  hundreds of US newspapers contributed by institutions in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). The API exposes
  search, title, issue, batch, and OCR text endpoints with no authentication required, returning responses in JSON and Atom
  feed formats.
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: open
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free · Open access
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/chroniclingamerica.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/chroniclingamerica/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
tags:
- Newspapers
- Historical
- Archives
- Library of Congress
- Government
- Digitized
- OCR
- Search
- Cultural Heritage
apis:
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-batches-api
  name: Chronicling America Batches API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving digitization batch information.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - Batches
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-batches-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-issues-api
  name: Chronicling America Issues API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving newspaper issue metadata.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - Issues
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-issues-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-ocr-api
  name: Chronicling America OCR API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving OCR text from digitized newspaper pages.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - OCR
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-ocr-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-pages-api
  name: Chronicling America Pages API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving individual newspaper page metadata and content.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - Pages
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-pages-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-search-api
  name: Chronicling America Search API
  description: Full-text search endpoints for newspaper pages and titles.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - Search
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-search-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- aid: chroniclingamerica:chroniclingamerica-titles-api
  name: Chronicling America Titles API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving newspaper title bibliographic metadata.
  humanURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  baseURL: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
  tags:
  - Titles
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/chroniclingamerica-titles-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/chroniclingamerica-agentic-access.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/chroniclingamerica-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/chroniclingamerica-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
- type: Documentation
  url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/
- type: About
  url: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/
- type: GitHubOrg
  url: https://github.com/LibraryOfCongress
- type: X
  url: https://twitter.com/librarycongress
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/library-of-congress
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.loc.gov/legal/privacy-policy/
- type: Plans
  url: plans/chroniclingamerica-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/chroniclingamerica-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/chroniclingamerica-finops.yml
- type: JSONLD
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/chroniclingamerica/refs/heads/main/json-ld/chroniclingamerica.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com