Online

The Boston African Americana Collection, a collection of digitized materials relating to African Americans, falls broadly within the categories of slavery, the abolition movement, free blacks, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, rural life, urban life, social life, advertising, and depictions of men, women, and children. It consists of broadsides, caricatures, illustrations, manuscripts, pamphlets, political cartoons, portraits, and views. The database contains images and transcriptions of over 500 items spanning the years 1770 to 1950, with the bulk of the collection falling around 1865. 

Database of Boston African Americans, 1820-1863, is a unique directory of names, addresses, and occupations for over 5,000 adult citizens of Boston, with information gathered from city directories, census records, and tax assessors' books.

The Boston Athenæum Theater Database is a guide to the theater programs and playbill collection at the Boston Athenæum. More than 90% of the material represented in the database consists of playbills or portions of playbills from about 45 Boston theaters, many of which no longer exist. The bulk of the playbill collection dates from circa 1860 to 1900, an especially vibrant period in the city's theater history when Boston was a theatrical beacon drawing to its stages some of the world's finest actors.

The Sheet Music Images Database is the result of a collaboration among the Boston Athenæum, the Boston Public Library, and Historic New England, supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The database contains approximately 2,300 images.  Pictorial sheet music covers offer a unique visual representation of a broad range of topics related to nineteenth-century American history and popular culture; many of the graphics were produced by notable artists working in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities.

The Narrative of the Life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Joans Pierce, alias James H.York, alias Burley Grove—The Highwayman (Boston: Harrington & Co, 1837), bound in human skin; a description of the book’s history, an image and a link to a full transcription of its text, and a list of further reading.

The Athenæum Centenary: The Influence and History of the Boston Athenæum from 1807 to 1907, with a record of its officers and benefactors and a complete list of proprietors, published to celebrate the Athenæum's one-hundredth anniversary in 1907, has been digitized and is available as a .pdf file. It is also available as a link in Athena’s catalog record. 

The Alexander Parris Digital Project  Led by the State Library of Massachusetts, the Alexander Parris Digital Project digitized Parris material held in the State Library and the collections of six Boston repositories: the Boston Athenæum, the Boston Public Library, Boston National Historical Park, Charlestown Navy Yard, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities). Each of these institutions contributed documents to a searchable digital archive that contains images and transcriptions of more than 400 items. Materials reproduced include architectural and mechanical drawings, specifications, correspondence, and accounts, and span Parris’s career from 1803 to 1851.