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Artifacts from the Boston Marathon bombing makeshift memorials


Archivists in Boston used to handling documents ranging from budget records to minutes of city council meetings, along with an occasional file dating to the city's 17th-century founding, have spent the last year processing thousands of sneakers, T-shirts and letters. These are the mementos left behind at an impromptu memorial built at the site of the 2013 bombing attack on the Boston Marathon, which killed three people and injured 264 at the race's crowded finish line. The makeshift shrine began in the days after the April 15 attack, as visitors and residents left tributes along the metal barricades erected by the police to fence off the site as they searched for clues about the bombers. Now, several hundred of the items - including four wooden crosses memorializing the three who died in the blasts and a university police officer who was shot dead a few days later in a related incident - are on display at Copley Square, this time inside the library for an exhibit that will run from April 7-May 11 2014. (REUTERS)

Here's a look at some of the archived items and those on display, as well as the makeshift memorials as seen in 2013.

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