Library | Portsmouth Athenaeum

New Books in May

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | May 10, 2025 | Announcements, Library

A budding reading habit this spring? We can help. Proprietors and Subscribers, click on the link below to discover the new books now available in the library. May New Books Not a Proprietor or a Subscriber? Find out how you can become a member and support the...

May 2025 Book List: April Showers Bring May Flowers!

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | May 8, 2025 | Announcements, Library

By Research Librarian Jessica McClain This oft-quoted proverb dates back to a 16th century work by English poet and Farmer Thomas Tusser. The lines appear in a sonnet included in the piece “A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie” as “And Aprill his stormes, to be good...

April 2025: Library Appreciation Month

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | Apr 9, 2025 | Announcements, Library

By Research Librarian Jessica McClain The American Library Association sponsored the first National Library Week in 1958, and we continue to recognize and celebrate the role of libraries and librarians in our communities during the first full week of April each year....

New Books in March

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | Mar 23, 2025 | Announcements, Library

It’s spring! Time for your reading lists to bloom with the new books now available in the library. Proprietors and Subscribers, click on the link below to discover the new books now available in the library. March New Books Not a Proprietor or a Subscriber? Find...

March 2025: Women’s History Month

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | Mar 13, 2025 | Announcements, Library

By Research Librarian Jessica McClain In February of 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued a Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as the first national observance of Women’s History Week with the following statement: From the first settlers who came...

February 2025: Black History Month

by Portsmouth Athenaeum | Feb 4, 2025 | Announcements, Library

By Research Librarian Jessica McClain Portsmouth’s Black history begins over 350 years ago in 1645—dating back almost as far as the area’s European history. Though many of their early stories involve enslavement and marginalization, Portsmouth’s Black residents built...