Between 1918 and 1949 staff members of the Portsmouth Public Library clipped articles from The Portsmouth Herald and other newspapers and glued them into 42 scrapbooks. The articles they selected for these scrapbooks covered such world changing events as WWI and WWII, as well as local concerns, such as news of an upcoming garden tour, a new movie by Louis DeRochemont, layoffs at the Navy Yard, or the election of the first city manager in Portsmouth. In short, these scrapbooks provide us with a fascinating (if somewhat subjective) view of life in Portsmouth — and the world beyond — before 1950.

To make the scrapbooks easier to use, a master index was compiled in 1997, utilizing each separate scrapbook index. The subject entry listed refers you to a scrapbook by volume number and year. You must consult the index included in each separate scrapbook to locate the page number for a particular article. Because subject headings varied somewhat, from scrapbook to scrapbook, there has been some attempt to standardize the subject terms used. In addition, "see" and "see also" entries have been added to the master index.

Due to the heavy use this collection has received over the years, and to the fragile nature of newspapers, the scrapbooks have shown signs of deterioration. Fortunately, grants received from The Thaxter Foundation in 1998-1999 permitted the library to have preservation photocopies made of this valuable collection. -Sarah Hartwell, Special Collections Librarian, February 1999

To view a complete scrapbook, click the PDF name below the image. Click on the book's image on the next page. The scrapbooks in this collection are fully searchable. Once the PDF is open, click Control+F (or Command+F on a Mac) to open the search feature.