New Bedford Free Public Library

Elite '09

19

101

Ger T.

Arlington, MA

3/6/2008 2 photos

A beautiful old building on the outskirts of the Whaling Historical Park. It boasts the Whaleman statue on one corner and the Lewis Temple statue on the other, so a good spot for photo ops in NB.  As far as collections go, most of the books here are really old, older than I've seen in most libraries in Massachusetts, and a lot of them with faded covers and in need of repair. The stacks are decently organized, with a microfiche room to the right of the entrance, which I haven't seen in a lot of modern libraries in a while.

Where this library really excels is their whaling and historical collections. I only can get away to come here on the weekends, when their NB Historical room is closed, but the website lists some excellent old map and geneology resources for NB and the Dartmouth/Acushnet area. They've also got a magnificent collection of general books on whaling available in the regular non-fiction section for checkout, a lot of stuff which is considerably out of print and which you can't even find on http://Amazon.com.

If you go to the fourth floor, you can walk through a mini-gallery of whaling and South Mass related art, all of which is worth the time!

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