"Good Will-Hinckley: Building a Landscape" is a new MMN exhibit produced by L.C. Bates Museum staff thanks to a Community Mobilization grant.

Put on your thinking caps: The next MMN Community Mobilization Program grant deadline is April 1!

While that sounds far away (Spring!), the date will arrive before you know it. If your organization has expressed an interest in doing a Maine Memory project, now’s the time to begin thinking seriously about the application process.

In partnership with the Maine State Library (MSL), the Community Mobilization Program helps local organizations–historical societies, libraries, and schools in particular–use participation in Maine Memory Network to develop skills, build capacity, and expand collaboration with local partners.

The grants and accompanying training empower communities to digitize and share their local history. Grants support digitization projects (up to $1,000), the creation of online exhibits (up to $1,500), and the creation of websites dedicated to the history of local communities (up to $4,000). (Note: These levels have increased over the 2011 amounts!)

All grant-supported projects will be shared through and become part of Maine Memory, which provides a robust technical infrastructure, a platform for training and skills development, consistent standards, and broad public access.

Applications must be postmarked by April 1. There will also be a fall deadline of September 1 for digitization and online exhibit projects only. Two additional grant cycles will take place in 2013. For details, including grant program guidelines and applications, please visit Maine Memory’s grants page. Or contact Community Partnership Coordinator Larissa Vigue Picard at lvpicard@mainehistory.org or 207-774-1822 x215.

MHS Director of Digital Projects Kathy Amoroso works with the MCHP team from Strong, Maine.

The three current Maine Community Heritage Project teams gathered at MHS today for their mid-year training on exhibit building and constructing a website. A total of 13 people from the participating towns of Strong, Surry, and Swan’s Island attended.

The day began with each team sharing the work they’ve done to date, and describing or presenting a storyboard of one of their exhibit topics.

Teacher Lynn Bonsey

Surry team leader Lynn Bonsey, a teacher at the town’s elementary school, shared some of the artifacts and stories that will appear in an exhibit on the history of Surry schools. The Swan’s Island team showed images from the quarrying industry that once thrived on the island, and provided granite for cobblestones in major eastern cities before shutting down in 1925. Strong Historical Society president Carl Stinchfield presented a detailed storyboard on “The Bridge that Changed the Map” which recounts how a suspension bridge with a $5,000 price tag drove a wedge between residents in 1856, resulting in the secession of East Strong.

Swan's Island team members during the work session.

Maine Memory staff then reviewed the philosophy behind creating successful online exhibits, and how to go about using the MMN online tools, ExhibitBuilder and SiteBuilder. Teams spent about an hour in the afternoon mocking up a sample exhibit to get a feel for the tools.

While the first half of the MCHP year was primarily focused on learning the tenets of good history, identifying resources, researching, and getting individual items up on Maine Memory, the second half will be focused on churning out the five exhibits required by the project. In addition, each town’s website will include a 3,000 narrative history of the community, and various other components. Websites are scheduled to be completed by May 15, and unveiled at a community celebration in June.

Ice cleat, Islesboro, ca. 1860

If you’ve ever taken a spill on a icy driveway or sidewalk, you can appreciate the value of today’s Maine Memory Network mystery artifact. While the modern crampon offers a multi-studded platform to grip the ice wherever you step down on it, ye olde ice cleat–also known as an “ice creeper”– provided a single area of protection.

This ca. 1860 cleat from Islesboro may have been used by someone in the ice industry–which flourished in a variety of areas in Maine before the advent of refrigeration.

“Ice cutting and Ice Houses on the Bombahook” tells the story of one such area. The exhibit was created in 2009-2010 by adults and students on the Hallowell Maine Community Heritage Project team.

The materials were recently sent to every public library in the state as part of a toolkit that promotes the role that libraries can play in fostering interest in Maine history.

There are five different posters, and five bookmarks–all with fascinating, provocative, charming images. A little lady with a jackhammer, elephants on the streets of Biddeford in 1910, a colossal statue of “Faith,” and a woman with a carcass of a bear hanging on a tree next to her are just a few hints to whet your appetite.

Click here to learn more and download copies!

1924 Portland Tax Record of 485 Congress Street (MHS)

A partnership between Maine Historical Society, the City of Portland, and Portland Public Library is pleased to announce that the first 10,000 entries from the 1924 Portland Tax Records have gone online on Maine Memory Network.

This major initiative vastly expands access to a valuable and heavily used research collection. The records were created as part of a city-wide tax reevaluation and include photographs (in most cases) and other information, including descriptions of building materials, finishes, and the property’s assessed value. On the back of each form, a pencil sketch illustrates the size and shape of the building footprint on the property.

About half of the records have been scanned and added to the site (for street names from A-M). The project is expected to be completed by summer 2012.

Search the records by owner, address, neighborhood, style, or use.

(This post was also published on the main MHS blog on 1/9/12.)

Whether you make resolutions or not, we hope you get a kick (or a least a wry smile) out of this list. Happy New Year!

Akers' head of sleeping child, ca. 1861

Get More Sleep

We swear this is an image of a child sleeping. It’s by Maine sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers (1825-1861), who was born in Westbrook but created many of his works in Italy.

Most adults get less sleep than they need, so take your cue from this peaceful-looking kid and put “more shut-eye” on your 2012 TO DO list. It’ll make all the other resolutions that much easier.

War food conservation poster, 1917

Eat Better (and Less)

Food factors into a huge number of New Year’s Resolutions. Whether about eating less, eating healthier, broadening one’s food horizons, cutting one’s food costs, cooking more instead of eating out, or something else entirely, a focus on diet is never far from many people’s minds.

During World War I, it was of huge importance for other, national reasons. But the lessons on these classic posters still resonate today. (Not to mention, they make great prints for your home! Order one through Vintage Maine Images.)

Mrs. Duran, the acrobat, Cousins Island, ca. 1920

Exercise More

In a word, get on the move! If the same old-same old exercise options bore you so much that you’ll give up before you even start, try something new. Stretch your body in ways it hasn’t been stretched before. Embrace the awkwardness of learning. You’re never too old to make an attempt.

Democrats share laugh, Lewiston, 1980

Take Life Less Seriously

What could be more serious than the affairs of state, nation, and the world? And yet even political figures, whose jobs are fraught with stress and criticism, and who sometimes must make life or death decisions, find time to let down their guard. Maybe you should, too. (Granted, we all wish some politicians would take things more seriously sometimes.)

Primary students dancing, North School, ca. 1900

Learn Something New

The sure cure to boredom and falling into a rut is to set yourself the goal of learning something new. Acquire a new skill, take up a new hobby, teach yourself about that alluring subject you’ve always wanted to know more about. Need a structured program? Take a class, enlist a friend, break it down into manageable steps.

Here again we should take our cue from children who learn uninhibitedly, for the pure joy and wonder of it.

Group on top of Mount Abram, Greenwood, 1929

Spend More Time Offline

In this day and age of Operation Information Overload, it’s important to deliberately experience life off the beaten path of cables, circuits, and screens. While you don’t have to summit a mountain to take this to heart, the happy looks on these women’s faces (click the image and use the Zoom tool) prove that it might not be a bad idea.

Dude Cowboy advertising at City Theater, Biddeford, ca. 1915

Attend More Programs and Events

Whatever your interests, whether highbrow or lowbrow, quiet or noisy, intimate or social, add more programs and special events to your calendar. (So what if your calendar is already stuffed? You can surely find a few open slots over the course of the next 365 days.) Take the kids or some friends to see a play or musical, join a book group, get tickets to the symphony, or get together a rowdy group to attend a sporting event.

Nearly every community has something going on, and it doesn’t have to cost much, or anything at all for the rewards to be priceless. (Bookmark the MHS Programs & Events page and check it frequently throughout the year.)

Girls with cat, Portland, 1927

Be Kinder

There’s not a lot that needs to be said about this one except that all of us would do well to take it to heart, every day. And that kindness manifests itself in countless ways, large and small, so don’t think you have to do something dramatic to show you care. (It’s worth having a look at the other two images from our 1927 “Be Kind to Animals Week” collection that go with this charmer.)

Moody family on beach, Camp Ellis, ca. 1906

Spend More Time with Loved Ones

This really should go without saying but, to paraphrase a well-worn adage, when some individuals get to the end of their lives, they’ll wish they’d spent more time with people than with material objects or toiling away at work. Perhaps this charming portrait of a family, physically connected and enjoying time together at the Maine coast, will inspire you.

Twombly family genealogy sampler, 1817

Get Your History On!

We couldn’t close out this list of resolutions without a nod to our very existence. Take some time this year to examine your personal history, your family’s history, your town’s history, your state’s history, your nation’s history, your world’s history, the history of an object, the history of a concept, the history of a person, the history of an animal, the history of an era, the history of an event, the history of a moment in time, and/or any other type of history you can think of. If we here at MHS can help, let us know.

As with any of these, and other positive resolutions that may be on your list, if you keep it, take it to heart, and work hard it, you’ll be that much richer in body and soul at this time next year.

Santa at the toll booth, Falmouth, 1982 (MMN #11452)

Think he’s just some guy that rides around in a sleigh and drops down chimneys? Well, think again. In Maine, Santa has given lollipops to drivers passing through the Falmouth toll booth, shaken hands with governors at the State House, taken a load off at an Augusta barbershop, driven up and down Congress Street with the reindeer, tried his luck at solving the Rubik’s Cube at a Brunswick store, and parachuted into Waterville, among many other unusual activities.

To see and read more about all of these fun and fanciful Santa sightings as well as the larger religious and cultural associations with the December holidays, take a moment to peruse the MMN exhibits “Evergreens and a Jolly Old Elf” and “The Public Face of Christmas.”

And be on your best behavior this week and always… you never know where Santa will turn up next!

Page Terrace, Fairfield, ca. 1930, part of the Good Will-Hinckley campus, and one of the images in the new L. C. Bates Museum exhibit.

A recipient of a Maine Memory Network grant in the spring of 2011, the L. C. Bates Museum in Hinckley–part of the Good Will Home Association–recently unveiled its new exhibit on the history of the Good Will campus landscape.

“Good Will-Hinckley: Building a Landscape” charts how Good Will founder, George Walter Hinckley, along with architects Carl Rust Parker and the Olmsted Brothers, envisioned and created a village atmosphere that would serve as a home-like haven for the children living there.

A MMN Contributing Partner (CP) for years, L. C. Bates Museum uploaded a whopping 300+ new images during their grant project period (23 of which appear in the exhibit). This makes for a total of 421 items on Maine Memory for the CP.

A previous exhibit on the Hinckley legacy–“George W. Hinckley and Needy Boys and Girls”–was written by MMN curator Candace Kanes and features images from both the L. C. Bates Museum/Good Will and Maine Historical Society collections.

Bridge construction, Waterville, ca. 1911

“We are growing to be somewhat cosmopolitan…” Waterville in 1911 takes reader-viewers on a journey through the central Maine city’s rapid growth in the early part of the 20th century.

“In 1911, Waterville, having more than doubled in size over the last four decades, was booming with business,” the exhibit opens. “Newly a city, Waterville was transformed from a small town isolated in central Maine to a city with connections to the rest of Maine, the United States, and the world.” The exhibit covers manufacturing, construction, retail, and the entertainment sector.

After enjoying the exhibit, take some time to peruse the total number of Waterville-based historical items on Maine Memory, or just those uploaded most recently by Waterville Public Library.

Item #29398 in Maine Memory. While "29398" appears to be the total number of items currently online, it's actually somewhat lower than that.

As of today, you can view well more than 20,000 historic items on Maine Memory Network. It was earlier this year that we hit and then bypassed 20,000 and could switch from saying “nearly” to “more than” when referring to that impressive number. Now we’re looking ahead to saying “nearly” again as we set our sites on the next big milestone–30,000.

When we talk to folks about Maine Memory, or put those statistics in informational and publicity materials, the numbers speak for themselves. But they also occasionally create confusion. If there are “only” some 20,000+ items in the database, why are item numbers now up in the 50,000s? And why, by the way, can’t you tell us exactly how many more than 20,000 there are?

A just-for-fun search by number: Item #11111 on Maine Memory.

There are logical answers to these understandable questions. As to the 50,000 figure, every time an item is uploaded, it gets a unique item number–the next chronological one available. Items sit in the “offline” area of the Contributing Partner’s (CP) account until getting fully cataloged and placed into “pending” for the MMN gatekeeper, Fran Pollitt, to approve (or bounce back to the CP for more information), before placing them online. If every single item uploaded since the beginning of Maine Memory had gone “live” on the site, there would be exactly as many real items in the database as there are numbers.

However, some items never go online for one reason or another–it turns out there’s not enough information to catalog them, or the image is poor, or there’s turnover at the organization and the task falls by the wayside, and so on. And some records get deleted if the CP decides, in fact, that they shouldn’t put that item online after all. When records are deleted, those item numbers are not reused, so there are phantom records, so to speak, all throughout the system.

Maine Memory item #72--the first item to go "live" in the database--"Thanksgiving Day at Casco Street School, Portland, 1922." (A timely image right now!)

Another little known fact: The first actual, official number used in the system was not 1, or 2, or 3, or anything close to that. In fact, you won’t find anything until you search for item 72. The records prior to that were used during the early testing of the database.

One final point: Due to some new programming in a pilot section of Maine Memory (that will be announced in the coming months), the system thinks it should create a new item number for each image, instead of each record, and many of the new records being uploaded in this section have three photographs associated with them instead of just one. (That’s why it’s still in the “pilot project” stage!)

So what this all comes down to is more than 20,000 items viewable to the public and about 11,000 additional items hidden away in the database either waiting for their moment in the spotlight, or in a bit of limbo. That may not add up to 50,000+, but it’s a pretty darn impressive figure nonetheless. And growing all the time.