Library of Congress – “The public can now explore more than 1.5 million historical newspaper images online and free of charge. The latest machine learning experience from LC Labs, Newspaper Navigator allows users to search visual content in American newspapers dating from 1789-1963. The user begins by entering a keyword that returns a selection of photos. Then the user can choose photos to search against, allowing the discovery of related images that were previously undetectable by search engines. For decades, partners across the United States have collaborated to digitize newspapers through the Library’s Chronicling America website, a database of historical U.S. newspapers. The text of the newspapers is made searchable by character recognition technology, but users looking for specific images were required to page through the individual issues. Through the creative ingenuity of Innovator in Residence Benjamin Lee and advances in machine learning, Newspaper Navigator now makes images in the newspapers searchable by enabling users to search by visual similarity. To create Newspaper Navigator, Lee trained computer algorithms to sort through 16 million Chronicling America newspaper pages in search of photographs, illustrations, maps, cartoons, comics, headlines and advertisements…

“Newspaper Navigator affords a whole new dimension of access to Chronicling America,” said Molly O’Hagan Hardy of the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Images and words on the printed newspaper page interact to construct meaning for readers past and present, and we miss half of that meaning making when our searches rely exclusively on the written text.” Newspaper Navigator will allow greater access to a large collection and can enable new discoveries from historical newspapers, Hardy said…”