Find a name in old newspapers and get the clipping, not the whole page
Searches 20 million pages of American newspapers, 1770 to 1963, held by the Library of Congress. Each hit comes back as the column it was printed in, with the OCR text underneath and a citation you can paste. The same wire story printed in a dozen towns shows up once.
Try: "May Otis Blackburn", 1929 to 1931 · Croke Park, Dublin, Nov to Dec 1920 · influenza in Bisbee, Arizona, fall 1918
What you get for each hit
- The column, cut out of the scan. The Library's OCR file says where every word sits on the page; Clipping File finds your words, takes the column around them (up to the headline when it's close) and asks the Library's image server for just that piece.
- The OCR text around your words, about 80 words either side, exactly as the Library's OCR read it. Old type and torn pages make OCR mistakes, so the scan is always shown next to it.
- Citations in Chicago and Evidence Explained style, with the permanent Library of Congress link to the page.
- Same story, one entry. Wire stories ran in dozens of papers. Clippings whose text mostly matches are grouped, earliest first.
- A timeline of the matching pages by month, and a sample dossier PDF of the first 10 stories.
Searches go from your browser straight to the Library of Congress, so the first run of a new search takes as long as the Library's own search (often 10 to 40 seconds). How it works · what we keep (no searches, no cookies).