Barton Branch Accessible Washroom Out of Order
| The accessible washroom at the Barton Branch is not working . We aim to get it fixed quickly. |
Central Library - 4th Floor Closure
The 4th Floor is closed this Saturday, March 8 for a Tax Preparation Clinic. Makerspace and Newcomer Learning Centre will remain open. Study spaces are available on Floors 1-3.
Spring Forward - Sunday, March 9
Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday, March 9 at 2 am. Move your clocks one hour ahead before you head to bed. It's also a good time to check and/or replace the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
Turner Park Branch - Large Format Printer Unavailable
The large format printer at Turner Park is currently unavailable. Please utilize our other Makerspace locations if needed. We will advise once it is restored to service.
Roadwork near Barton Branch
Starting Monday March 17, the City of Hamilton begins roadwork on Wilson Street and Sherman Avenue. The construction will be completed in stages until December 2025. There may be traffic delays if you are planning to visit the Barton Branch.
Project History
The City of Hamilton's cybersecurity-related outage has affected some of the services offered by HPL. Our online image database PreView is unavailable, and we are unable to provide a timeline for its return. Some images, such as postcards, can be found online on Flickr. You are also welcome to visit the archives where photographs are available by request. Kindly note that such requests require specific subjects or people of interest, which can be researched in our Where-to-Look Index.
Since 1914, Hamilton Public Library has collected, preserved and curated historical materials, incuding, clipping files, archives, rare books, periodicals, historical memorabilia, pamphlets, photographs and topical scrapbooks on a wide range of topics about Hamilton. The collection includes more than three million images depicting the history of the city and surrounding areas dating from the mid-1800s.
The PreVIEW Digitization project started in October 2004 as a sustainable approach to digitization at Hamilton Public Library. Two-dimensional, non-textual historical images, including photographs, negatives, glass negatives, posters, maps, and postcards from the 1850s to the 1950s, were selected from the collection and targeted for digitization.
The project makes digital images accessible online, providing a resource for students, researchers, educators and the general public. It raises public awareness of the library’s tremendous resources through online exhibitions and library programs and lead to substantially increased use. Access is global, showcasing HPL's collection far beyond our traditional physical reach. Digitization also enables the preservation and conservation of the library’s image collections, and affirms a responsibility to protect rare materials while making them publicly accessible.
Our focus in the coming years is to digitize more of the collection and increase access to more images with the use of online digital formats. More than 13,000 historical images are available online, with high-resolution copies.
