So far during 2019, researchers have accessed 689 boxes of manuscript material in the Special Collections & Archives Department of Fogler Library. The highest use month was February, when 36 different researchers accessed 146 boxes during that month alone. Projects that lead researchers into the archives include work on class projects, theses, books (both fiction […]
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The entire Remnants of Our Lives collection is now available online, with links to materials gathered in 47 interviews — a total of 1,020 digital items — including audio, transcripts, and photographs. “Remnants of Our Lives: Maine Women and Traditional Textile Arts” was an exhibition, sponsored and curated by the Northeast Archives of Folklore and […]
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As Maine’s Bicentennial approaches, institutions, scholars, students and residents are once again looking to examine the events that culminated in Maine’s statehood. To support these efforts, we have gathered from our collections items that we hope will be of particular relevance and will provide a variety of perspectives on sensitive topics related to political, economic, […]
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More than 1,500 files are now available as digital objects through the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History section of the library’s ArchivesSpace database. Recent additions include items on the Airline Road, Argyle Boom, and the Maine Women and Traditional Textile Arts Project Remnants of Our Lives. A list of collections now available online […]
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Special thanks to our intern, Rachael Murphy, who created this webpage of information about Ivy Day, a 19th Century campus tradition. Several marble plaques featuring ivy leaves can still be found on campus buildings today. These pages explain why.
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By Matthew Revitt In June of this year, I received a call in Special Collections from Harold Borns, Professor Emeritus in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences and the Climate Change Institute. The mystery Professor Borns wanted to solve was whether Fogler Library’s University Archive records could prove that scientist Louis Agassiz came to […]
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By Pauline Bickford-Duane and Brad Beauregard In Massachusetts, a researcher at MIT hopes to verify that a well-known artist visited the University of Maine early in her career. In the Midwest, a UMaine alumnus searches for old photographs of his family members. Here in Maine, several former classmates reminisce on their early writing careers with […]
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With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the particularly civic-minded and altruistic women who had fought for universal suffrage were free to take up further initiatives with a renewed faith in democracy. Many of them spoke of their single-minded pursuit of the vote as a kind of temporary renunciation—as necessitating a neglect of […]
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In a box of aged photographs and letters, Dr. Charles Scontras sees more than what’s readily apparent. An average viewer might take in people walking in parade-format or the way a few worn edges hint at a document’s age. Scontras sees people lobbying for safer working conditions, better hours. He sees a time, not long […]
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In the mid-1980s, Barry Darling delivered a collection of recordings and materials from WLBZ Radio to Special Collections at Raymond H. Fogler Library. He wasn’t sure what would become of the recordings, but he had a feeling he was bringing them to the right place. “I worried they would just get thrown out if I […]
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