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Local History


The Library has materials and resources related to Pawtucket's Local History that researchers may find useful 

Historic Photographs
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The Library has a substantial collection of photographs, a significant portion of these photographs have been digitized and are available on the Library's Flickr Page.  As policy photographs that have already been scanned and made available online are not generally made available to patrons in person in order to preserve the physical photographs from damage.  We've also compiled a Flickr Cheatsheet to help you navigate through the Library's photo collection on Flickr

Local Newspapers
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Pawtucket Library Digital Newspapers This collection includes the Pawtucket Times from 1886-1972 and the Pawtucket Gazette & Chronicle from 1825-1912. The goal of this project is to digitize the Library’s microfilm collection of Pawtucket newspapers. Additional years will be added as funding, grants and donations allow. Please note that search results may appear to contain misspellings and jumbled words due to the age of some of the editions. This does not affect the quality of the search results or the image of the actual newspaper article. 

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NewsBank Newspapers (Remote Access Available)The Newsbank newspaper database includes the Pawtucket Times, The Times, the Valley Breeze Pawtucket Edition, and the Providence Journal. 

    • The (Pawtucket) Times: June 10, 2008 – Current Full-text articles on local news, issues, events, people and much more from current and archived issues of The Times. Includes obituaries, editorials, announcements, sports, real estate and other sections. Updated daily. 
    • Providence Journal December 23, 1981 – current Full-text articles from this daily Rhode Island newspaper on local news, sports, politics, opinion, events, food, restaurants and more. Updated daily. 
    • Providence Journal Obituaries & Death Notices Obituaries and death notices from the Providence Journal (1980 to today). An easy-to-use interface allows searching by name, date range, or text such as institutional name, social affiliation(s), geographic location(s), philanthropic activities, etc. 
    • The Valley Breeze Pawtucket Edition: August 19, 2009 – CurrentFull-text weekly newspaper serving the cities and towns of Northern Rhode Island and the Blackstone Valley. Remote Users: At login enter your 14-digit Pawtucket Public Library card number.
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The Attleboro Public Library has recently begun digitizing The Attleboro Sun with 1945-1969 currently available on their Sun Chronicle Digital Archive

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Additional Pawtucket Newspapers available through Google News: 

Yearbooks
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The Library, with the assistance of many local schools, has digitized numerous yearbooks that can be viewed on the Library's Flickr page.
The Library also has several finding aids to help locate individuals in some of the Public High School yearbooks on the Local History Documents Page

City Directories
The library has physical copies of the city directories for Pawtucket going back to the mid 1800s through current that can be viewed at the Reference Desk.  To see what directories the Library has before visiting click here

City Directories from 1867-1935 are now available online through the Library's PLDN database

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