New Hampshire State Library

10/19/2026

Join Adam Di Filippe (Holderness Free Library), Janel Flanagan (Laconia Public Library) & Deb Baker (NHSL) on Thu., November 19 at 10 am for a zoom workshop about hosting Role Playing Games at your library! Email Deb Baker at: [email protected] for more information.

10/19/2026

Join us in continuing our celebration of America's 250th with our final speaker program of the year, "Three Men and a One-Shilling Knife: a Genealogical Look at Local History".

Presented by Robert Cameron Weir and Virginia Hansen from the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.

"This engaging program uses a dramatic 1788 tavern killing in New Durham to show how genealogists uncover the stories from the past. Through newspapers, court records, military records, petitions, and other original sources, the lecture follows the intertwined lives of three Revolutionary War veterans and reveals how family history research can illuminate the people, events, and communities of New Hampshire’s past."-- program blurb

Speaker Information:

Robert Cameron Weir is a genealogical researcher, educator, and author who lives in Dover, New Hampshire. He specializes in hard problems related to New England genealogy, from 1620 to the present. He is a member of the Association for Professional Genealogy and is Vice President and Publications Director of the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.

Virginia Hansen resides in Laconia, NH. She serves as the Treasurer for the NH Society of Genealogists. Since retiring from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then embarking on a 3-year sailing adventure, she settled in Laconia and resumed her genealogical research. She has published several manuscripts on her own family and NH families. She is currently the manager of Bayside and Union Cemeteries in Laconia and volunteers with the Laconia Historical and Museum Society.

Event info: Free and open to the public!

Wednesday, November 4th from 1-2 pm at the NH State Library, 20 Park St., Concord, NH 03301

Questions?: contact Felicia Martin at 603-271-2316 or [email protected]

10/08/2026

Happened upon this blog post from The Library of Congress about women who entered the government workforce during WWII. This post focuses on Barbara Mortensen, a fire lookout working in the White Mountain National Forest in the vicinity of Gorham, NH. In June 1943, Office of War Information photographer John Collier, Jr. profiled Mortensen and her Great Dane, Brenda about her position.

10/08/2026

Arthur Is Turning 30!
To celebrate this milestone, children ages 4-8 are invited to participate in ARTHUR’s 30-Day Reading Challenge during the month of November!
Click here for more information & resources:
https://nhbookcenter.blogspot.com/2026/10/arthur-turns-30.html

08/31/2026

On Saturday, August 22, 2026, librarians Felicia Martin and Zahra Gordon from the NH State Library attended the 26th annual National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. as representatives of the NH Center for the Book. The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together bestselling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and booths spotlighting the 56 affiliate Centers for the Book in the U.S.

The NH Center for the Book is located within the NH State Library and led by its Director, Felicia Martin, Acquisitions Librarian. The NH Center for the Book was established in 2003 to celebrate and promote reading, books, literacy, and the literary heritage of New Hampshire and to highlight the role that reading and libraries play in enriching the lives of the people of the Granite State.

Every year each affiliate center attends the National Book Festival to promote their state/territory’s literary heritage through book selections for adult and youth audiences. NH’s center selected Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (adult selection) and Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor by Emily Arnold McCully (youth selection). Both books were selected to celebrate the Granite State’s long history in both urban and rural manufacturing.

08/04/2026

The NH Center for the Book has announced its 2026 Great Reads Selections! "Last Night in Twisted River" by John Irving is this year's Adult Readers Selection and "Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor" by Emily Arnold McCully is this year's Young Readers Selection. Congratulations to this year's authors!
For more information about the Great Reads selections, follow this link: https://nhbookcenter.blogspot.com/2026/08/2026-national-book-festival-great-reads.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawTfCX1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe117OlF2j1FG_Yk6JvcFIzjaeLkBnllOCZF_3M87PXo94edfAX4xC8AHQCJc_aem_zmXyiEFTGB_6FBQMQQNhyw

06/09/2026

Check out this interesting article from The Library of Congress about the history of obituaries in U.S. newspapers. The first example given is an obituary from The New Hampshire Gazette in Portsmouth, N.H from March 20, 1761!
Thousands of reels of NH newspapers on microfilm are available at the NH State Library to research this very topic. Contact us for any NH newspaper research needs!

: Obituaries as we know them today are rich records of a person’s life. But did you know that this information-rich article is a very recent development? Learn more about what newspapers published from the very earliest death notices to today’s modern obituaries.

06/04/2026

Glad to see our NH bird loving librarians enjoyed the Flight Path Program at New Hampshire Audubon in Concord! 🐦🦆🦉🐦‍⬛👀

06/04/2026

Mark your calendars! Join us in celebrating America's 250th with our first speaker program of the year, "Redcoats & Rebels: New Hampshire and the American Revolution"

Presented by Mary Adams, staff member at New Hampshire Historical Society, "Redcoats and Rebels" brings to light the role the Granite State played in the American Revolution:

"New Hampshire often gets overlooked in the narrative of the American Revolution, overshadowed by its noisy neighbor to the south. Nowadays, few people know about Paul Revere’s first ride, which was to Portsmouth in December 1774 to warn the patriots that the British were coming to reinforce Fort William and Mary, five months before the Redcoats marched on Concord and Lexington. Nor do they know that two-thirds of the troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill were from New Hampshire. Most people are also unaware that New Hampshire’s Provincial Congress adopted the first state constitution in January 1776, making no mention of royal authority and essentially declaring independence from Great Britain six months before anyone else. And this is just the beginning of New Hampshire’s revolutionary story."-- program blurb

This program was made possible in part by the Center for the Book at the NH State Library, New Hampshire Humanities & National Endowment for the Humanities.

Click here for the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/share/1ECMpXTYd5/