NAME

Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica - Find URLs for a given person on the Library of Congress Newspaper Records

VERSION

Version 0.07

SYNOPSIS

    use HTTP::Cache::Transparent;  # be nice
    use Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica;

    HTTP::Cache::Transparent::init({
	BasePath => '/tmp/cache'
    });
    my $loc = Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica->new({
	firstname => 'John',
	lastname => 'Smith',
	state => 'Indiana',
	date_of_death => 1862
    });

    while(my $url = $loc->get_next_entry()) {
	print "$url\n";
    }

DESCRIPTION

The Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica module allows users to search for historical newspaper records from the Chronicling America archive, maintained by the Library of Congress. By providing a person's first name, last name, and state, the module constructs and executes search queries, retrieving URLs to relevant newspaper pages in JSON format. It supports additional filters like date of birth and date of death, enforces rate-limiting to comply with API request limits, local caching, and includes robust error handling and validation. Ideal for genealogy research, this module streamlines access to historical newspaper archives with an easy-to-use interface.

• Rate-Limiting

  A minimum interval between successive API calls can be enforced to ensure that the API is not overwhelmed and to comply with any request throttling requirements.

  Rate-limiting is implemented using Time::HiRes. A minimum interval between API calls can be specified via the min_interval parameter in the constructor. Before making an API call, the module checks how much time has elapsed since the last request and, if necessary, sleeps for the remaining time.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

new

Creates a Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica object.

It takes three mandatory arguments:

• firstname

• lastname

• state - Must be the full name, not an abbreviation.

Accepts the following optional arguments:

• cache

  A caching object. If not provided, an in-memory cache is created with a default expiration of one hour.

• middlename

• date_of_birth

• date_of_death

• host - The domain of the site to search, the default is https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

• ua - An object that understands get and env_proxy messages, such as LWP::UserAgent::Throttled.

• min_interval - Amount to rate limit. Defaults to 3 seconds, inline with https://libraryofcongress.github.io/data-exploration/loc.gov%20JSON%20API/Chronicling_America/README.html#rate-limits

get_next_entry

Returns the next match as a URL.

AUTHOR

Nigel Horne, <njh at nigelhorne.com>

BUGS

If a middle name is given and no match is found, it should search again without the middle name.

SEE ALSO

• https://github.com/nigelhorne/gedcom

• https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

• https://github.com/LibraryOfCongress/data-exploration

SUPPORT

This module is provided as-is without any warranty.

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-genealogy-chroniclingamerica at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Genealogy-ChroniclingAmerica. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica

You can also look for information at:

• RT: CPAN's request tracker

  http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Genealogy-ChroniclingAmerica

• Search CPAN

  https://metacpan.org/release/Genealogy-ChroniclingAmerica

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2018-2025 Nigel Horne.

This program is released under the following licence: GPL2

cpanm Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Genealogy::ChroniclingAmerica