Maine State Library and Fogler Library Collaborate on Town Reports Digitization Project
Contact: Gretchen Gfeller (207) 581-1696
Orono, ME — “The Kennebec bridge, at one time almost a wreck, has been thoroughly repaired as to be as strong and safe as ever. In place of the wooden and decaying railroad bridge, swept off by the flood, now stands a bridge of iron 960 feet long, a model of strength and beauty, and a lasting monument of the genius of its inventor, and of the energy and forecast of its owners.” Augusta Town Report, 1871
This is one example of the information that is recorded in the town reports of Maine. Historical data, local budgets, infrastructure or education, it’s all there, and Fogler Library’s latest digitization project brings the information right to your computer screen. The Town Reports Digitization Project involves a key partnership with the Maine State Library, whose print holdings of town reports for the 500+ towns in Maine is the most extensive in the state with holdings stretching back to the 1850s. The web site combines these with reports from Fogler’s Special Collections to provide comprehensive statewide coverage.
Fogler Library hopes to add the participation of local historical societies and town offices to bring even more information to the project. The Litchfield Historical Society has already stepped forward providing scanned versions of their town reports, which have been added to the site.
“We are very excited about having the Litchfield Historical Commission step forward to offer the town reports that they have scanned, “ says Sharon Quinn Fitzgerald, Head of Technical Services and Library Web Manager.” We encourage other towns to take the initiative in scanning their local holdings. The essential ingredient is staff time, often volunteers willing to take part in the emerging community project.”
The web site includes a section of town highlights as well as photographs from the Penobscot Marine Museum’s extensive glass plate image archive.
Kjerste Christensen, who oversees file preparation at Fogler Library adds, “We are happy to go over the specs with staff just learning to work with digital publishing software. We can accept files as JPEG images or in Adobe PDF format.” Fogler library will continue to host the files, link them to the central web site, and provide optical character recognition (OCR) of the documents that enables full text searching.
Where available, towns are visually represented by their distinctive seals which often depict a sense of the strengths or values of a particular community.