Over 800 issues of historical newspapers from Kennebunk came online this week thanks to the efforts of librarian Kate Jacobs at the Kennebunk Free Library. The Kennebunk Enterprise was a weekly newspaper published in Kennebunk, Maine between November 1904 and 1924. The Enterprise was notable for being the first woman-owned newspaper in Kennebunk, having been founded and

One of the benefits of having a scan lab at the library is the ability to crowdsource historical content that might not otherwise ever end up in an institutional collection. Earlier this summer, Robert and Sandy Stubbs of Hallowell were going through their belongings and reached out to us to see if we might be

We started this blog a few years ago in an effort to share information about efforts to improve access to Maine’s historical collections. Every day here at the library provides the opportunity to work with some wonderful piece of history.  Through our digitization partnerships with the Maine State Archives, the Law and Legislative Research Library and

Maine State Library staff get first peek at “new” microfilm that will be used for digitization. Several boxes of newly duplicated microfilm recently arrived at the Maine State Library in preparation for the next phase of our newspaper digitization project.  The work is the result of a continuation of funding through the National Digital Newspaper

The Land Office Plan Books, in the holdings of the Maine State Archives, are a significant collection of surveys of the State and are frequently requested by researchers. The maps are from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Maine showing the division of lands among settlers and establishment of boundary lines between Massachusetts, Maine and Canada.

The May 2018 issue of Downeast Magazine included a feature on a growing collection of historical content that we’ve been working on in collaboration with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The project includes nearly 1,100 reports and publications from the agency’s past that have been imaged on Maine State Library scanners and

The Maine State Library continues to make progress on the National Digital Newspaper Project. We will be adding 100,000 newspaper pages published in Maine between 1850 and 1922 to Chronicling America (ChronAm). ChronAm is a Library of Congress database funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The first batch of Maine newspapers is expected

This past summer the Maine hub went live in DPLA with over 60,000 items from 64 different Maine based collections. Read DPLA’s Blog Post Welcoming Digital Maine The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an online searchable collaborative network. The site contains information on over 18 million items (and growing), contributed by a network

In 1940, as World War II was escalating in Europe, the United States was beginning to take precautions.  In Maine, one of those precautions was to begin registering all aliens living in the State.  On June 14, 1940, Governor Lewis E. Barrows ordered the registration of aliens living in Maine by proclamation.  Immediately these aliens

Amelia: or the Influence of Virtue: An Old Man’s Story is the third novel written by Sally Sayward Barrell Keating Wood, the first authoress of Maine. It was printed at the Oracle Press, by William Treadwell & Co., Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1802. In The Maine Book, Henry E. Dunnack describes Amelia as, “…a story told