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The Kentucky Images collection contains postcards, photographs and slides of people, architecture, and locations in Kentucky and Appalachia.

The collection contains non-Fayette County school yearbooks and images, dating from 1878-1968.
Wonderful podcasts and walking tours have been created by our staff. Please enjoy!

The Library's digitized collection includes some non-Fayette County directories for businesses, farms and residences.

Content from over 80 Kentucky newspapers and news sources, including the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The materials in these collections are physically housed in the Kentucky Room at the Central Library and can be viewed during the Central Library's open hours.
For more information about a specific item, including any copyright restrictions on that item, please click on the information button:
The Central Kentucky Cemeteries Maps are powered by Google Maps. Counties include: Fayette, Bourbon, Clark, Garrard, Harrison, Jessamine, Lincoln, Madison, Mercer, Montgomery, Nicholas, Powell, Scott, and Woodford.
Throughout the fall of 2023 and into the winter for 2023, the Lexington Public Library will be embarking on a strategic visioning process that will guide library programs and services for the next three years.

The Kentucky Gazette was the first paper established west of the Allegheny Mountains, founded by John and Fielding Bradford. The frontier paper focused on East Coast and International news, though some local announcements can be found.
Join us for a walking tour of Lexington Public Library's historic downtown locations! The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of 1.1 miles.
Please note: We prioritized the ease of the walk rather than the chronological order of the library locations.
The music clips used in this tour are from “Walking Barefoot on Grass” by Kai Engel, and are used with a CCBY license. It is available here.

Old Kentucky Architecture is a comprehensive book by Rexford Newcomb that was published in 1940.

While the focus of content in the digital archive is Fayette County, many other counties are represented. This list is in alphabetical order by county name for non-Fayette County content.
Anderson County


The Kentucky Rally Songs pamphlet contains 42 songs compiled and printed by the state chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, to be used at the many gatherings and rallies that they organized in the late 19th and ea
Join us for a walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s public art. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of 1 mile.
The music clips used in this tour are from “Walking Barefoot on Grass” by Kai Engel, and are used with a CCBY license. It is available here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/
This tour has been updated to include the new mural at Stop #5, "In-Finito".


The Kentucky Postcard collection contains images of well-known sites in Central Kentucky, such as Keeneland, Transylvania University, Ashland, and many others.

Illustrated Lexington Kentucky contains photographs, demographics, commerce and financial information about Lexington up to 1919.

The Kentucky Mountain Club was founded in 1929 as a social organization for residents of Lexington, Kentucky, who had been born or resided in the counties of eastern Kentucky.


The Around the Town in Lexington, Kentucky magazine pamphlet contains advertisements for local attractions, apartment homes, restaurants, and hotels.


The Kentucky Almanac was a regional almanac that began printing in 1788, at the office of John Bradford’s Kentucky Gazette in Lexington.