The Library of Congress announced within the last couple of weeks a big upgrades to its Chronicling America Web site, a historic newspaper archive. The upgraded archive has an additional 380,000 pages, including newspapers from three new states (Louisiana, Montana, and South Carolina.) The upgrade also extends the collections coverage further into the Civil War era.

The stats, for those of you playing along at home, now equal almost 2.7 million page views from 348 titles published between 1860 and 1922. The downside is that only 22 states and DC are available. (You can get a list of available newspapers here.)

The archive is free to access at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/. While you’re there, don’t forget to check out the Newspaper Directory, which provides information on newspapers published in the US between 1690 and now. There’s also the Illustrated Newspaper Supplement collection on Flickr.