The Public Library of New London Local History and Genealogy Room provides a collection of books, photographs, microfilm, and other materials with a specific emphasis on New London County history and families. To ensure the availability of this room, these resources can be browsed by appointment only. Please call (860) 447-1411 ext 5 to make an appointment.

The PLNL is happy to assist patrons with their research. Research queries can be sent to the Reference Department using the form at the bottom of the page. Please review our guidelines below before submitting your question.

1. There is no research fee for patrons currently residing within the State of Connecticut. However, The Public Library of New London will charge a $25 research fee for research conducted for any out-of-state patron. We will refund the fee if our staff are unable to find the requested material. The fee will not be charged for general inquiries on library services or materials, or any inquiries made in person.

Payment for out-of-state requests may be made here or by mailing your query with a check made payable to the Public Library of New London. Please make sure your request meets our criteria before submitting payment:

Public Library of New London
Reference Department – LHR Request
63 Huntington Street
New London, CT 06320

2. Research requests must be specific in nature, and must be for information from indexed, published sources or from known page numbers from a specific title. Requests for newspaper articles must include a known publish date, rather than a range of possible dates.

Example of an acceptable research request: “Please help me find an obituary in the New London Day newspaper for John Smith, published on or around July 7th, 1987.”

Example of a research request that is too broad: “Please send me anything you have about construction on Bank Street in 1951-52.”

3. The library reserves the right to turn down requests for any reason, including attempts to use our genealogy reference services for monetary gain, or from patrons who use these services excessively.

4. Your query may necessitate that you make an appointment to browse our Local History Room. This is particularly true in cases where the desired information must be sourced from within unindexed or unspecific materials, or where the publish date is unknown.  Please understand that there are limitations to the types of inquiries our staff can directly address, and that your query may be best answered by visiting us in person.

Please review the policies for using the Local History collection here. To make an appointment to browse this collection, please call us at (860) 447-1411 ext 5. For your convenience, a short list of selected resources contained in the room is provided here.

If you are a current resident of Connecticut, please use this form to submit your query.
If you are not a current resident of Connecticut, please use this form to submit your query.

Note to out-of-state residents: Please do not use the in-state form to circumvent the PLNL’s research fee. Due to high volumes of inquiries, the PLNL is unable to reply to out-of-state requests submitted using the in-state form.  A CT area code will be required to verify current residency.