The Olive Tree

Message from Dean Joyce Rumery

This fall the University of Maine and Fogler Library welcome the Class of 2012. With an estimated enrollment of 2,173 this is the largest class in Maine’s history and we expect the total enrollment to top 12,000 this year. The library staff is well prepared to provide the resources, assistance, and services for these students as well as for our faculty and staff.

As part of the preparation we have continued to acquire materials for our users. The Library now provides more than 1 million volumes, 3,400 periodical subscriptions, 1.6 million microforms, and access to approximately 25,000 online serials and more than 200 databases. Fogler Library is the regional depository for federal government publications and houses approximately 2.3 million U.S. Federal, Maine State, and Canadian federal and provincial documents plus the U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository. The Darling Marine Center Library, located in Walpole, has a collection of more than 13,300 volumes focused on marine studies. We also have online guides created by our librarians to help students in their use of the resources. Last year our students accessed the guides more than 250,000 times and we expect that number to continue to increase. We also reconfigured some of the space within the library to provide extra seating for our students.

This semester we will continue our work preparing documents for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) accreditation visit that will take place in the Spring. Although the Library document has a draft completed we will be working to update that information and make certain that all supporting materials are readily available for the reviewers. This is an important task since we are taking the time to study our collections and services as well as present our work to the reviewers.

We are continuing our digitization projects with the State of Maine Town reports, a partnership with the Maine State Library. To date twenty-five towns have representative holdings available publicly. These reports date from the mid-nineteenth century onward and document public education, road maintenance, and taxation issues. The 105 years of the University Yearbook, The Prism, that are now available online have become very well known. An article in the September 2008 issue of Downeast Magazine entitled Musings from Maine had a section on the yearbooks called, "Don’t Show the Kids."

I feel that this semester will be exciting and challenging as we work with our new students and continue our projects. We would love to have you visit and see for yourself the services and resources we provide. Please let us know if you are planning to visit. I would be pleased to give you a tour of the library so you can meet the staff and see the changes we have made and the services we offer. I hope you are pleased with what we are doing and that you will continue to support us into the future. Thank you for your support.


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