Author Talk with Scott J. Kerman

• The Duke: Weekly Conversations with the Last Honest Politician
• Wednesday, April 8, 2026. 12 pm - 1:00 pm
• In-person and Virtual event. No registration required.
• State Library of Massachusetts - Room 341, Massachusetts State House
• Livestream on YouTube
• Books available for purchase; $20.00 cash, check, Venmo and Zelle accepted

The State Library of Massachusetts Author Talks Series is excited to host author Scott Kerman! This is an in-person and virtual event. The livestream will be available on our YouTube channel courtesy of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Broadcast Services. Tune in at noon!

Be sure to sign up for our Author Talks newsletter and follow our social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, and X) for the latest information on our visiting authors. If you are unable to attend, the recording will be posted to our YouTube channel to watch anytime - view all past recordings here!

About the book: Michael Dukakis is a former Massachusetts governor, presidential candidate, and lifelong resident of Brookline. For many, the name Governor Dukakis evokes nostalgia for a bygone time in Massachusetts history. Dukakis holds the title of longest serving governor in MA; serving terms in 1975-79 and again in 1983-91. The Duke is a humorous and intimate look at Dukakis and his career. Author Scott Kerman sits down with Dukakis and over a series of casual conversations, anecdotes, reflections, and photos, the reader gets a great sense of Dukakis, his personality, and personal take on politics past and present.

Dukakis with author Scott Kerman

About the author: Scott Kerman is a writer, stand-up comedian, and columnist for the Eagle Tribune. He has written 6 books including his series The World According to Scott. He also hosts a Boston sports podcast, The Grandstanders. Check out his YouTube channel for more.

As always, this author talk is free and open to all. Assisted listening devices will be made available upon request. If you are able to join us in person for this talk, attendees will be able to participate in a question-and-answer session with the author. Books will be available for purchase; $20.00 cash, check, Venmo and Zelle accepted.

Any questions or concerns, please email us at AuthorTalks.StateLibrary@mass.gov. For more information on the State Library Author Talks series, please visit our site.


April Pascucci
On behalf of the Author Talks Committee

Now Online: The State of Our Library

We are happy to announce that our new exhibit The State of Our Library: 200 Years of Serving the Commonwealth is now available online! Visit our website to explore the history of the State Library at your convenience.

Follow the history of the State Library from its founding in 1826 up through the modern day. The exhibit highlights our collection, along with our various services, resources, and technological advances. And take a peek at the different locations within the State House that we've occupied and the changes to our physical space.

As a complement to our online exhibit, check out our Flickr album of photographs showing the State Library through the years. 

For those who want to see the exhibit in person, stop by the State House to see the cases outside of the library in room 341, before stepping inside to explore our reading room. The State House is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 5:00.

Elizabeth Roscio

On behalf of the Exhibits Working Group

Open Houses at the State Library!

As part of our 200th celebrations, the State Library has two upcoming Open Houses this month. Read more below:

Special Collections Anniversary Tour
March 18, 11:00 and 12:15

The Special Collections Department is excited to invite you to join us for a highlight tour of our historical holdings on March 18! We will be pulling from storage a selection of materials dating from the 1600s to the modern era. On view will be some of our favorite maps, photographs, rare books, broadsides, manuscripts, and more!

Tours will be offered at 11:00 and 12:15. This event is free and open to the public but due to space constraints, we ask that participants use this link to register in advance. 

Special Collections is located in Room 55 of the State House, and we look forward to seeing you soon! Reach out to us at special.collections@mass.gov with any questions.

State Library 200th Anniversary Open House

March 25, 11:00 to 1:00

Join us on Wednesday, March 25 for our 200th Anniversary Open House! Librarians from our Reference and Special Collections Departments will be on-hand to give an overview of our collections and chat about our resources and services.

We are also pleased to share that as a special commemoration of 200 years of collecting in the Commonwealth, a treasure from our collection will be on display. William Bradford's Of Plimoth Plantation (1630-1650) will be on view in our Collection Spotlight case during the duration of the Open House!

This event is open to the public and will take place from 11:00 to 1:00 in our main reading room (Room 341 of the State House). Reach out with any questions to reference.department@mass.gov and we hope to see you then!

Bluebirds Visit for March

Our trip through the thirteen original colonies by way of their state birds continues this month with the bluebird (Audubon plate 113). The Eastern Bluebird was established as the New York State Bird in 1970. Shown in this print is the vibrant male soaring above, and the female below, feeding a young bluebird.

Highlighting the bluebird in March serves double-duty. March is Women's History Month, and a few years ago we featured Audubon's print 393, the Townsend Warbler, Arctic Blue-bird, and Western Blue-bird, to bring attention to the fact that in 1915, suffragettes in Massachusetts used the bluebird as a symbol of their movement. Read more about bluebirds for suffrage in our previous blog post.

We're excited for the chance to share a different bluebird print from Birds of America both for suffrage and as part of our state bird series. Visit us from March 10 through April 7 to see this vibrant print on display. And catch up on all featured state birds on our blog.

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian

Women’s History Month at the State Library

Women’s History Month, observed each March, is a time to recognize and celebrate the achievements, contributions, and lasting impact of women throughout history. It offers an opportunity to reflect on the progress women have made while also acknowledging the challenges they have faced, and still face, across different eras and fields. To celebrate Women’s History Month, the State Library of Massachusetts is sharing a selection of materials from our collections that highlight women’s lives, achievements, and lasting influence.

Woman, Her Position, Influence, and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World: Her Biography, Her History, from the Garden of Eden to the Twentieth Century by William C. King, 1901

While shelving one day, I came across this book and I immediately had to take it off the shelf. Its spine looked gorgeous and when I saw the cover, it quickly became one of my favorite books in our collections. Published in 1901, this book covers the advancement of women from the ancient world up through the end of the 19th century. Through biographies and illustrations, this book tells the story of the social conditions of the times. You can view this book freely via Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M.D. by Susan Wilson, 2023

Women and Children First is a biography of Dr. Susan Dimock (1847–1875), a pioneering figure in American medicine. The book highlights Dimock’s role as one of the first female physicians and surgeons in the United States, particularly known for advancing medical care for women. It traces her early life in North Carolina, her move to Boston during the Civil War, and her medical training at the New England Hospital for Women and Children and the University of Zurich, emphasizing her lasting impact on women’s health and the medical profession. Author Susan Wilson joined us last March for an Author Talk about this book, so be sure to check out the recording on our YouTube channel to learn more!

From Suffrage to the Senate: America’s Political Women: an Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues by Suzanne O’Dea, 2006 (2 vols)

This two-volume work is a comprehensive reference guide that chronicles American women's path to political power and social equality. It contains over 900 in-depth biographies of women politicians, activists, journalists, and lawyers, covering significant movements, organizations, court cases, and legislation. These volumes trace women’s history from the abolition and suffrage movements to modern issues.

Historic Women Trailblazers of Massachusetts

This booklet, put together by the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism in 2020, was created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. It features more than 70 women “Trailblazers” who have contributed to the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world. The women featured in this book have strong ties to Massachusetts and represent suffragists, abolitionists, teachers, politicians, scientists, athletes, artists, and so much more. This book also contains a map marking important historic sites across Massachusetts. View and download the book and the map here. 

These books and others will be on display in the Library throughout the month of March. Stop in to see them Monday-Friday, 9 am to 5 pm.

If you’d like to learn more about Women’s History Month, be sure to take a look at some of our other blog posts we’ve published on this topic:

• The Influence of Women in Harper's Weekly, 1862 
• Bluebirds for Suffrage 
• “The Nonsense of It: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Woman Suffrage” and the 1917 edition of The Woman Suffrage Year Book 

Jessica Shrey
Legal Research Reference Librarian

State Library Newsletter - March Issue

Our March newsletter is out now! In it, you'll find all the information about our 200th events in one place, along with features for Women's History Month, new items on display, and more!

Pictured here is a preview, but the full issue can be accessed by clicking here. And you can also sign up for our mailing list to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox.

(Curious about the motif that has bene used as the background for many of our 200th anniversary promotional items? It's a zoomed-in shot of the beautiful and colorful stained glass in the fanlights in our reading room!)

The State Library Turns 200: A New Exhibit and Collection Spotlight

We are excited to announce the opening of our new exhibit The State of Our Library: 200 Years of Serving the Commonwealth coinciding with our 200th birthday this month! As we celebrate this milestone, the exhibit showcases both the Library's impressive history and its current offerings. Using published documents, historical photographs and artifacts, and archival materials from the Library’s institutional records, the exhibit highlights our various services, resources, and technologies, as well as the changes and expansions to its physical space that have occurred over the last 200 years. 

Complementing our new exhibit is the 1856 edition of Ballou's Pictorial and a copy of Library Journal from March 1926, both on display this month in our Collection Spotlight case. Ballou’s Pictorial was a weekly periodical published in Boston from 1851 through 1859 (though up until 1855 it was published as Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion). We’ve written about this periodical in a previous blog post, but in a nutshell, it was full of interesting information to read or discuss, along with illustrations to examine. One of those illustrations is this full-page print of the “Interior View of the Massachusetts State Library” found in the May 31, 1856 issue. 

Illustration of the interior of the State Library
from Ballou's Pictorial, May 31, 1856

This image shows the Library, which at the time was only thirty years old, in its second location within the State House. Only one year prior, an addition to the building was completed that moved the Library to a central location and included two floors – a reading room and a balcony, as depicted in this image. The Library remained in this space for forty years, until another addition was completed in 1895 that moved the Library to its current location.

The same image was reproduced in the March 1, 1926 issue of Library Journal, a publication founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey (of Dewey Decimal fame) and still in existence today. Included in this issue is a feature on the State Library as it celebrated its 100th birthday. The article, titled “A Century of the Massachusetts State Library” gives information about the founding and a synopsis of the State Librarians up to 1926. The article ends with a note on the collections, stating “its collection of statute law is said to be unsurpassed except by that of the Library of Congress. Perhaps its most interesting original manuscript is that of Governor William Bradford’s “History of Plimoth Plantation,” otherwise known as “The Log of the Mayflower.” One hundred years after the publishing of this article, the Of Plimoth Plantation remains one of the treasures of our collection and we are excited to share that it will be on display during our upcoming Open House on March 25.

While Ballou’s Pictorial and Library Journal will only be on display in our Collection Spotlight case from March 2 through March 31, The State of Our Library is on view in the display cases outside of the Library through 2026. If these items piqued your interest in the State Library's history, there is even more to be found in the full exhibit, so be sure to visit us Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 5:00 to check it out, or click here to see the online version!

Elizabeth Roscio, Preservation Librarian

Exhibits Working Group