Please join us for a roundtable visit with some of the treasures from Portland Public Library’s Special Collections and Archives in the Portland Room. We’ll look at and talk about rare books, maps, prints, and manuscripts. You’ll also be introduced to the department itself, and how the story of the Greater Portland area is documented and preserved through these archival materials.

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.

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, to pass along to later generations, or even just to re-read one’s journeys later on.

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.

Two historic atlases of Portland are now available online in our Digital Commons collection. Goodwin Atlas: 1882 covers revaluation plans of Portland produced by City Engineer William A. Goodwin in 1882. The 82 large-format plates show lots, streets, addresses, property owners, and more during the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1866 and 1900 when the city boundaries extended.

Richards Atlas: 1914 contains 24 double-page color maps of Portland and South Portland, documenting property lots, buildings, owners’ names, electric and steam railways, sewer lines, water mains, etc.