Lexington’s African American Heritage Walking Tour
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
Explore topics related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) in this space for youth, grades 3-12.
Learn how the Lexington Public Library Foundation empowers change within our library system.
Learn or develop a personal or professional skill with LinkedIn Learning classes, available for free with your library card.
Did you know physical materials renew automatically if they don’t have a waiting list? Check your account online to see the status of your items.
The Kentucky Progress Commission was formed in 1928 in order to draw tourism and business to Kentucky. It was formed by the Kentucky Legislature, and was a 12 person board.
The Kentucky Pioneer Genealogy and Records Magazine published various articles about early Kentucky history as a quarterly publication from 1979-1985, then annually 1986-1988.
The Kentucky Reporter was published from October 1817-April 1832, by William W. Worsley and Thomas Smith. It is the direct continuation of the The Reporter.
The Around the Town in Lexington, Kentucky magazine pamphlet contains advertisements for local attractions, apartment homes, restaurants, and hotels.
The Kentucky Mountain Club was founded in 1929 as a social organization for residents of Lexington, Kentucky, who had been born or resided in the counties of eastern Kentucky.
Search, view, and download digitized historical Lexington, KY Newspapers covering the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Illustrated Lexington Kentucky contains photographs, demographics, commerce and financial information about Lexington up to 1919.
The Kentucky Almanac was a regional almanac that began printing in 1788, at the office of John Bradford’s Kentucky Gazette in Lexington.
The Kentucky Chautauqua Assembly presented an annual event in Lexington’s Woodland Park with days of programming. Presentations varied from live music and entertainment to lectures and speeches from national figures.
The Lexington Public Library’s Digital Archives provide open access to researchers and students to learn more about the rich history of Lexington and Fayette County. It contains a fraction of the Library’s physical holdings, which are housed and available for reference in the Kentucky Room at the Central Library. New material is being digitized and added constantly, so there's always something new to find.
The archives have a simple keyword search, and it is possible to browse the collections by subject, area, or decade. The Lexington Public Library actively reviews and labels materials in our archives with statements that indicate how you may reuse the images, and what sort of permission, if any, you need to do so. Please check the information for each image to determine its legal status.
The Kentucky Images collection contains postcards, photographs and slides of people, architecture, and locations in Kentucky and Appalachia.
The Kentucky History collection contains Kentucky-related documents not specifically related to Fayette County.
The Lexington Public Library has made an effort to ensure that all of our digital collections are public domain, or that we have gotten approval from the copyright holders to display their work. Most - but not all - of these collections, to the best of our knowledge, have no known US copyright restrictions. Some items in the collection are under copyright but qualify for online display by libraries under Section 108(h) of United States Copyright Law. Some of the collections provided in the Library's Digital Archives are made available under an assertion of fair use, which does not necessarily apply to an individual's use of them.
The Publications Collection contains runs of historical Kentucky newspapers, almanacs, and magazines.
All databases are available from this page.
The Lexington Public Library offers an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service which allows cardholders in good standing to borrow books and magazine articles we do not own and cannot purchase. The Lexington Public Library also lends our books to libraries both inside and outside the Commonwealth of Kentucky.