Teachers and students (or anyone else in the public, for that matter) can now explore more than 1.5 million historical newspaper images online using artificial intelligence. 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.

In July 1848, L'illustration, a French weekly, printed the first photo to appear alongside a story. It depicted Parisian barricades set up during the city's June Days uprising. Nearly two centuries later, photojournalism has bestowed libraries with legions of archival pictures that tell stories of our past. But without a methodical approach to curate them, these historical images could get lost in endless mounds of data. That's why the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is undergoing an experiment. Researchers are using specialized algorithms to extract historic images from newspapers.