Jessica Deane Rosner’s Diary Project artist’s book includes this page of her writings and art.

Picasso made them. So did Matisse. Yet in today’s increasingly disembodied, all-digital world, who really needs something as small, fragile and resolutely low-tech as an artist’s book?

Judging by the latest exhibit at the 5 Traverse Gallery, the answer is: a lot of people.

Organized by gallery co-director Maya Allison with help from Brent Legault, owner of Providence’s Ada Books, “Book as Post Modern Medium (‘The Book Show’)” features more than 50 artist’s books, ranging from crudely printed “zines” and comics to slickly produced graphic novels and children’s books.

For some visitors, the fact that many of the books are by local artists and illustrators may also come as a surprise. In fact, the only real surprise is that somebody didn’t do this show sooner.

After all, Rhode Island has a long history of attracting artist-storytellers, both as longtime residents (David Macaulay, Chris Van Allsburg) and as short-term guests (Ben Katchor, Seth MacFarlane). Meanwhile, the kind of artist’s book that dominates the 5 Traverse show — which is to say mostly small, self-printed and defiantly non-commercial — has become something of a specialty among younger artists, especially those associated with Providence’s now-legendary Fort Thunder art collective.

Fittingly, the Traverse show is divided into two parts, like the pages of an open book. (Of course, the gallery’s tiny two-room space might also have something to do with it, but never mind.)

In what amounts to the show’s opening section, Allison has assembled drawings and other materials from two recently released artist’s books: Jessica Deane Rosner’s Diary Project and Will Schaff’s Monday Morning, Going to Work.

Stylistically, it’s hard to imagine an odder odd couple.

Rosner, who’s based in Cranston, is an artist-diarist who combines confessional writing (all of it rendered in the same squint-inducing handwriting) with an array of whimsical-looking pen-and-ink drawings. It’s a style that may remind some viewers of New Yorker illustrators such as Moira Kalman and Roz Chast, especially in the way Rosner transforms episodes from her own life into images that feel both funny and poignant. At the same time, there’s a self-critical intensity, even obsessiveness to Rosner’s work that keeps it from ever seeming cute or saccharine.

Schaff, on the other hand, doesn’t have a cute bone in his body. A fan of German Expressionist artists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz, he conjures up images worthy of a latter-day Hieronymus Bosch: a man who vomits skeletal bodies through his gaping mouth; lovers who literally stab each other to death with words; figures whose eyes are consumed by flames.

At the same time, Schaff’s title — Monday Morning, Going to Work — provides at least a trace of grim humor. After all, who doesn’t get the Monday morning blues from time to time (even if vomiting, knife wounds and flaming body parts aren’t always among the symptoms)?

A closer look, however, reveals some surprising similarities between Schaff and Rosner. Relationships, for example, play a prominent role in both artist’s books, with Rosner using her diary entries to offer candid assessments of friends and lovers and Schaff using his book to chronicle what appears to be a failed love affair. Both books also tell a similar story, which goes something like this: being an artist is hard, which means that living with an artist can be hard, although it also gives artists something to make art about.

The show’s second half consists of a makeshift reading room filled with a wide array of works, ranging from cheap, do-it-yourself comics and magazines to hardbound books.

Highlights include Holly Gaboriault’s Le Drama des Poupees de Papier, which chronicles the adventures of a pair of Victorian-era paper dolls (in French “poupees des papiers”) and Melissa Pace’s Teacher’s Key, which turns an old geometry textbook into a kind of miniature sculpture. Also good are works by Natalie Stopka (Magda and Millicent), Jacqueline Ott (Ping Pong, Vols. I and II) and Jonathan Bonner (Taha’s Box).

“Book as Post Modern Medium (‘The Book Show’)” runs through June 27 at the 5 Traverse Gallery, 5 Traverse St. in Providence. Hours: Wednesday-Sunday noon-6. Contact: (401) 278-4968 or www.5traverse.com.

“Fragile Memory,” a charming new exhibit at the Providence Public Library, offers a time-capsule view of a Rhode Island that few of us still remember: neatly dressed men in frock coats and straw hats; women out for a Sunday stroll in heavy Victorian dresses; trolley cars rattling along cobblestone streets; a boy’s basketball team clad in what looks like striped pairs of woolen pajamas.

Taken from a collection of more than a thousand glass-plate negatives, the show also features more domestic images. In one, a well-dressed man proudly holds up a baby as though hoisting a prize-winning fish. In another, a family sits stiffly for what was probably a lengthy exposure — all except for a young boy in the middle of the picture who’s little more than a ghostly blur.

In fact, it’s the sheer ordinariness of these pictures that makes them so beguiling. True, the people in these photographs may look a bit different. But the pictures they took — mainly nondescript portraits, street scenes, interiors — aren’t much different from the ones that populate today’s digital photo albums.

Of course, if you’re looking for something more dramatic, the show, which has been lovingly installed by library volunteer Agata Michalowska with help from the AS220 Community Darkroom, also delivers on that score. Tucked away in one of the show’s display cases are two large-format views of one of the marvels of 19th-century American industry: the giant Corliss steam engine built for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

Equipped with a 30-foot flywheel and boasting more than a mile of shafts and rotors, the Rhode Island-built “Centennial Engine” was the largest steam engine built during the 19th century. It was also one of the quietest. Indeed, many visitors to the Centennial Exposition remarked that the sound of the Corliss engine was virtually lost amid the drone of machinery in the exposition’s main industrial hall.

“Fragile Memory” runs through June 27 in the Special Collections Exhibition Hall, Third Floor, Providence Public Library, 150 Empire St. Library hours: Monday and Thursday noon-8, Tuesday-Wednesday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Friday-Saturday 9-5:30. Contact (401) 455-8000.

bvansicl@projo.com