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Visitors walk though the Granary Burying Ground, which includes the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, seen through a window at the Boston Athenaeum, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

BOSTON – When David Arsenault takes down a worn, leather-bound 19th-century book from the winding shelves of the Boston Athenaeum, he feels a sense of awe — like he’s handling an artifact in a museum.

Many of the half a million books that line the library's seemingly endless maze of reading room shelves and stacks were printed before his great-great-grandparents were born. Among fraying copies of Charles Dickens novels, Civil War-era biographies and town genealogies, everything has a history and a

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