loc

Access the Library of Congress from R.

Chronicling America provides access [140,000] historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages.

Installation

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("news-r/loc")

Example

library(loc)

# titles
titles <- loc_search_titles("michigan", pages = 2)
#> ℹ 9 pages available
#> 
 downloading [========================================] 100%

# pages
(articles <- loc_search_pages("Thomas"))
#> ℹ 110300 pages available
#> # A tibble: 11 x 28
#>    sequence county edition frequency id    subject city  date  title
#>       <int> <list> <lgl>   <chr>     <chr> <list>  <lis> <chr> <chr>
#>  1       40 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1906… Los …
#>  2       45 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1906… Los …
#>  3       46 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1907… Los …
#>  4       46 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1906… Los …
#>  5       50 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1906… Los …
#>  6       56 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1907… Los …
#>  7       44 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1907… Los …
#>  8        5 <NULL> NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1912… Even…
#>  9       39 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1900… New-…
#> 10       31 <chr … NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1901… New-…
#> 11       85 <NULL> NA      Daily     /lcc… <list … <chr… 1935… Even…
#> # … with 19 more variables: end_year <int>, note <list>, state <list>,
#> #   section_label <chr>, type <chr>, place_of_publication <chr>,
#> #   start_year <int>, edition_label <chr>, publisher <chr>,
#> #   language <list>, alt_title <list>, lccn <chr>, country <chr>,
#> #   ocr_eng <chr>, batch <chr>, title_normal <chr>, url <chr>,
#> #   place <list>, page <chr>

The text of the newspaper is in the ocr_eng variable. You can reconstruct endpoints to specific newspapers, editions, or issues.

a <- sample(articles$url, 1) # take a random article
pdf <- gsub(".json", ".pdf", a) # change to PDF
# browseURL(pdf)

And you can get the text with:

txt <- gsub(".json", "/ocr.txt", a) # change to PDF
readLines(txt)
#> Warning in readLines(txt): incomplete final line found on 'http://
#> chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1906-02-11/ed-1/seq-46/ocr.txt'
#> [1] "> It Really Wasn'i George's Fault This Time,. But He. Got Seat Up Just the Same it!"
#> [2] "Too Strenuous Thomas"