BPL - Online Collections

BPL at the Internet Archive - Read thousands of rare and research materials online thanks to our partnership with the Boston Library Consortium and the Open Content Alliance.
Children's Books from the Jordan Collection - Over 500 historical series, tracts, and Mother Goose collections are available via the International Children's Digital Library.
John Adams Library - Browse and search 3,500 books from John Adams's personal library, view his marginal notes, and learn more about this President and his passion for books.
OverDrive Downloadable Media - Choose from hundreds of digital titles available in eBook, audio book, music, and video formats. Note: Additional software may be required to borrow OverDrive titles. Please see the OverDrive quick start guide for more information.
Rare Books and Manuscripts at Flickr - Our Rare Books and Manuscripts Department houses more than 600,000 printed items and 1 million manuscripts.

Newspapers

Newspaper Directories - Newspaper Directories were created for prospective advertisers to learn about media markets. They may give information about publication's circulation and are one of the first places to look to discover which titles were published in a given year or for a geographical area.

Government Documents from Our Collections - Peruse reports and statistics from years gone by, published by local and federal governments.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center - View the collection, browse maps in the news, take virtual tours, and find resources for the classroom.

BPL Online Store - These galleries represent a small portion of all the images available for view at the Library and you can purchase prints, cards, and t-shirts of them.
Flickr Collections - See what we have been scanning from our vast collection of photographs, lithographs, stereographs, posters, postcards, book bindings, and more.
On The Edge: The Hidden Art of Fore-edge Painting - Unlike the spine and covers of a bookbinding, the page edges are not usually decorated, however, a fore-edge painting is where the page block is fanned and an image applied to the stepped surface. Discover the trove of these treasures housed at the Boston Public Library.

Sound Archives - Listen to hundreds of spoken word and musical recordings from our special collections.

Boston at the Movies - Watch historic silent films of Boston at the turn of the 20th century.