91´«Ã½

The exhibition consists of six to seven separate, free-standing sections; each section is approximately 18 feet wide and 7-1/2 feet high (108-126 running feet). Text and illustrations appear on only one side of the sections. The entire exhibition requires approximately 1,000 square feet of space for optimal display. Libraries that apply are strongly encouraged to make a computer station or stations available near the exhibit so that viewers can access websites with additional educational activities for all ages.

“John Adams Unbound” is about Adams’s personal library itself—a collection of 3,500 books willed by Adams to the people of Massachusetts and deposited in the Boston Public Library in 1894. The exhibit shows Adams wrestling with intellectual and political ideas as he interacted with these books throughout his life. Adams set forth quite deliberately to educate himself by collecting books on an immense variety of subjects and by engaging the great thinkers, philosophers, and political minds of many times and places through their writings.