Portals Events and Happenings - Providence Public Library

Jordan Goffin, Head Curator of Special Collections, and two students looking at items in Special Collections

My Friends in Special Collections

PPL Special Collections Fellowship Update: My Friends in the Special Collections Here are some pics of just a few of my buddies messing things up in the special collection! Here’s Mickey Zacchilli playing with the scrimshawed whale teeth! They even let her keep the gloves! …And there’s Keegan and Molly forcing Special Collections Librarian, Jordan Goffin …

A window display designer setting up a window display at Providence Public Library

Nordstrom Window Installation

Visual Merchandising professionals from Nordstrom at Providence Place Mall, bring attention to the teen creations through artistic displays in the library’s Empire Street windows.

Portals candle by Burke & Hare, sold during the 2015 Portals exhibition at Providence Public Library

Portals Candles Available – Limited Edition

Pour yourself a glass of wine, light a candle and settle in for a cozy night with your favorite book. We enlisted extraordinary candle-maker Erica from Burke and Hare Co. to browse our collection for a PPL Portals inspired scented candle and pillar. Both limited edition candles are available exclusively at Burke & Hare Co. …

Afro Futurism event at Providence Public Library, part of Portals exhibition

On Afrofuturism, Motherships, and Afronauts

Confession: No one would ever consider me a sci-fi aficionado. Ever. Music has always been my escape and where my imaginings of my place in a futuristic, fantastical world have lingered. Early P-Funk, anyone? While my geek flag is planted squarely in the intersection of better librarianship through technology, peering into a topic like Afro-Futurism …

Travel from Book to Film

Transport yourself through time and space when you travel from book to film. These pairs include romance, magic, time travel, strange creatures, apes and Mars. The Chronicles of Narnia portals, magic, fantasy Transported to a magical world by entering a wardrobe time portal, four siblings find themselves in Narnia, populated with beasts, dwarfs, witches and …

Text from a book in Providence Public Library's Special Collections

Fox Point Juvenile Delinquents

Oh My Goodness! This little book is the Holy Grail of Fox Point juvenile delinquency! This was where the Fox Point Boy’s Club recorded the trouble the kids in the neighborhood got into in the 1930s and 1940s. Shoplifting, back talk, towel stealing, robbery, assault, breaking and entering and darker/sadder stuff. It was salvaged from …

An illustration of mummies from Providence Public Library Special Collections

Folio Balcony & Mummies

Today I got to visit the elusive Folio Balcony and I noticed a big blue book on a shelf titled ‘Necropolis of Ancon in Peru.’ It was a book of water color drawings of German Ethnologists digging up tons of peruvian mummies published in 1887. It’s unfortunate that the W. Reiss and A. Stubel dug all …

49th Century

Workin on a thing about #providencepubliclibrary #pplspecialcollections in the 49th century… #portals2016

Time Capsules: A Portal to Providence's Past

A little over one year ago the oldest time capsule discovered in American history was opened. It was discovered in the cornerstone of the Boston State House, placed there in 1795 by then Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. The opening of the capsule garnered widespread media coverage, and its contents gave the world a …

10 Great Time Travel Stories – Part II

Last week we published Part I, featuring 5 classic time travel tales. These next five Time Travel books are more recent and anchor themselves in historical or everyday events. They are less about the concept of time travel and more about what we can learn from being put into circumstances beyond our control. The Anubis …