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These tours are guided audio walking tours with a variety of topics focused on Downtown Lexington, KY. Music will play in between each stop, and the listener can pause the track while walking between stops.
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The collection contains non-Fayette County school yearbooks and images, dating from 1878-1968.

The Kentucky Images collection contains postcards, photographs and slides of people, architecture, and locations in Kentucky and Appalachia.
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 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 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.
Wonderful podcasts and walking tours have been created by our staff. Please enjoy!

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.

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


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".

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 Materials Selection Policy was initially adopted February 25, 1987 by the Lexington Public Library Board of Trustees and was revised March 24, 1993. The Materials Selection Policy was updated and renamed the Collection Development Policy which was approved by the Board on January 14, 2009. The Board of Trustees assumes full responsibility for all legal actions which may result from the implementation of any policies stated herein.

The Kentucky Progress Commission was formed in 1928 in order to draw tourism and business to Kentucky. It was formed by the Kentucky Legislature, and was a 12 person board.

The Kentucky Pioneer Genealogy and Records Magazine published various articles about early Kentucky history as a quarterly publication from 1979-1985, then annually 1986-1988.

The Kentucky Reporter was published from October 1817-April 1832, by William W. Worsley and Thomas Smith. It is the direct continuation of the The Reporter.

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