The new exhibit in the Portland Room celebrates two centuries of printing in Portland. The photographs and published examples on display are drawn from our archival collections. Printing and bookbinding were integral to the city’s economy, and Exchange Street was our “printers’ row” in the 19th century.

Portland Contemporary Archive is Portland Public Library’s digital archive where we collect stories from you, our community members, about how COVID-19 is impacting your life. Browse the collection and learn about how YOU can submit!

Here are a few sites that accentuate photographic media, their many different processes, and how they’ve been used since the mid-19th century. Archival work, such as we do in the Portland Room at PPL, brings together the interpretation and cataloguing of photo media, understanding historic image-creation processes, and their preservation.

For your viewing enjoyment, here are some major library collections of digitized rare books and prints.

PPL offers many sources for your genealogy research, via the Library’s Portland Room. In addition to books, periodicals, and microfilms- here is a list of web sites you can freely access from outside the Library.

Many write to preserve the present — for future readers, perhaps to pass along to later generations — or even just to re-read one’s journeys later on.

The Children’s Special Collection in the Portland Room comprises over 600 classic children’s books, most of which were published in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries. These books provide an overview of the subject matter and period book bindings. Many are beautifully illustrated by notable artists such as Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth, C.E. Brook, Kate Greenaway, and others.

For additional, online reading, the digitized Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature offers a vast, open-source collection of more than 115,000 volumes published in the United States and Great Britain from the mid-1600s to present day.

Launched in 1924 by the Junior League of Portland to bring “good theatre to children,” the Children’s Theatre of Maine is America’s oldest continuing children’s theatre. Drawing the attention of Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, the Children’s Theatre gained notoriety in the 1950s. Former CTM actors include Linda Lavin, Judd Nelson, Tony Shalhoub, and Andrea Martin. The Theatre archives are now available for research in the Portland Room and some pieces are also in our Digital Commons online collection.

The library’s Portland Room includes a special collection of recordings of interviews with Portland’s elder Jewish community members. The first set, made by Konnilyn G. Feig in 1976 and 1977, comprises the Portland Jewish Oral History Project and includes the original recordings and print transcripts. In partnership with the comprehensive Documenting Maine Jewry project, the Library also provides online access to an ongoing collection of contemporary interviews made by the local Jewish community itself.

The Portland Public Library manages the 1936-2003 photographic still film negative collection  from the Portland Press Herald, an immense documentation of Portland’s history through the lens of the daily newspaper’s photography. PPL is conserving and indexing the collection of 800,000 images and selectively scanning them for photo essays on the Life of the Library Blog, the Main Library’s “Aerial Portland” exhibit, and our Digital Commons online collection.