Margaret Chase Smith Library
Newsletter
A Newsletter for Friends of the Library
Vol. 40, No. 1
As we welcome spring, the staff of the Margaret Chase Smith Library is working on many exciting events! National History Day in Maine planning is underway, we continue to update the facility with new storage materials, and the twenty-eighth annual Margaret Chase Smith essay contest is still open.
In this issue, you will learn about our recent library activities, educational opportunities, and various researchers and visitors. Each staff member has written what they have been doing over the last few months. Be sure to scroll all the way down and check out our up coming events section to see what’s on the horizon.
Directions
by David Richards
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a presidential campaign going on in 2024. It will be our last one before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence in 2026. Let’s hope the democratic experiment survives the upcoming election, without a repeat of January 6th.
The Library will approach the topic in two ways. The first is through a book discussion series titled “Future Visions.” I have selected five books by authors who have had the imagination to look ahead at the human condition. We began in February with Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. In this third highest selling work of fiction in the United States during the nineteenth century, Bellamy envisioned from the vantage point of 1887 a social, economic, and political paradise of cooperation, plenty, and peace, where inequality had been eradicated.
From March to June, the Library book group will gather once a month on the third Tuesday of the month to discuss the future visions presented in The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells, The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London, It Can’t Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis, and The Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler. If you would like to join the lively group, contact me at davidr@mcslibrary.org. And don’t let distance be an obstacle. We do offer a Zoom option and have participants from as far away as Juneau, Alaska.
Our second election year initiative is the 2024 Maine Town Meeting, which will be held on Friday, May 10th. The theme this year will be potential impacts of artificial intelligence on democracy. Our guides for the morning will be two members of the University of Maine faculty, Jon Ippolito and Michael Socolow. Ippolito is professor of New Media and director of the Digital Curation program. He will help us navigate and understand the brave new world of artificial intelligence. AI Margaret Chase Smith may even be asked to weigh in on the subject. Socolow is a professor in the Department of Communications and Journalism. Drawing upon his background as a media historian, he will explain how successive waves of new media technology have transformed American presidential politics since the late nineteenth century.
More information on the Maine Town Meeting will be sent out at the beginning of April. In the meantime, please reserve May 10th on your calendar. More important, remember that the founders of our democratic republic believed that the experiment would only succeed if citizens were virtuous, vigilant, informed, and engaged. The Library will give you the chance to sharpen these vital civic qualities in the coming months. Please join us.
Jon Ippolito
Cover of Looking Backward
Michael Socolow
Communication Corner
By John Taylor
National History Day in Maine 2024
Contest Season is underway and I am excited to say we are growing! The registration numbers have nearly tripled for the Northern Regional Contest, and our new partners the University of Southern Maine have been great to work with the last few months. I am currently in the thick of planning and coordinating multiple contests right now. Our Southern Regional will be taking place on March 23 and the Northern Regional is happening one week later on March 30. With more participants we have been looking to see how to gracefully expand our State Contest at the University of Maine. Meetings there have been productive and I anticipate one of our largest events in Orono next month on April 27!
As always I need judges. If interested in judging for our State Contest please reach out to me at john.m.taylor@maine.edu. Remember, you do not have to be an expert. Librarians, historians, archivists, educators, and armchair historians are all welcome to participate. We will provide an orientation on contest day and supply you with the necessary tools for judging as the event approaches.
2024 Margaret Chase Smith Library Essay Contest
Final notice. Our annual essay contest is nearing the end! This year we are asking Maine high school seniors to write about the impact of technology on privacy and safety.
In 1964, Senator Margaret Chase Smith discussed the “very profound changes that science and technology have brought upon our way of life.” She noted that the “probable future effects” of technology on civilization was “breathtaking” and “awesome,” but to some “downright fearful.” The Senator described these skeptics and their “moral faintheartedness” as apprehensive people concerned that new technology would cause our society to become “automated, mechanized and synthesized.” She further emphasized that she did not share in their pessimism that computers would dominate “the thinking of our society that we will become a ‘robotized’ society dominated by a mental laziness that not only lets the machines do, but ultimately dominate, our thinking.”
Sixty years later, Senator Smith could not fathom the role technology plays in our daily lives. Today teenagers use technology, more specifically the internet and social media, for a multitude of reasons. The benefits include creating relationships with people and developing personal identities through social networking and messaging, playing online games, and virtual learning. On the contrary, potential risks for adolescents consist of cyberbullying, trolling, isolation, and access to inappropriate material or relationships. In a recent article the American Psychological Association quoted Mary Alvord, PhD saying “Just as we decide when kids are old enough to drive, and we teach them to be good drivers, we can establish guidelines and teach children to use social media safely.” The Margaret Chase Smith Library invites students to recommend what guidelines we as a society should establish for teenagers concerning their use of technology to ensure their personal safety and privacy.
For more information and contest guidelines you can click here. Please pass this along to any high school seniors you may know. Essays are due April 2, 2024. First prize is $1,000!
The Exhibit Hall at the 2023 NHD in ME State Contest.
John Taylor and Nicole Rancourt giving instruction to judges at the 2023 NHD in ME State Contest.
A sampling of medalists at the NHD in ME 2023 State Contest
learning Lounge
by Kim Nelson
It has been thrilling to be a small part of the much needed changes in the storage room at our facility. It is fascinating the unique and mostly one of a kind items, that only a limited number of individuals have seen, are in the process of being properly preserved. Taking archival classes while getting my Library Degree, led me to this facility years ago, and I am pleased to be able to put into practice the things I learned. I am truly looking forward to doing the complete inventory that will take place once the items are in their new homes. I love doing inventory, usually of books, but this is such an outstanding opportunity that it may become my favorite inventory experience, certainly better than inventorying airplane nuts and bolts of my first job out of high school. Knowing you are part of preserving history for future generations is an honor and I am grateful to be a part of this process. This project will also leave me with years of work for data processing/cataloging into our software and I am excited to get started as this is the other aspect of my work that I absolutely love.
Field trips have started to return. It is wonderful to represent Senator Smith to our younger members of society. I loved going on field trips at school as well as trips with my parents to various museums and special sites.Some of those experiences with the individuals who interacted with us students and younger visitors left a wonderful lasting impression on me. I hope in my interactions with these young scholars, I pass along the excitement and wonder of learning about interesting people and places that affected and sometimes continue to affect our lives while providing a fun experience that they, too, will remember for years to come.Playing rounds of Margaret Chase Smith Bingo never gets old and is tons of fun for the students and myself. If you know a teacher or school who would be interested in visiting our facility, please have them reach out to the library to schedule a trip.The library does have the ability to pay for bussing for field trips.
National History Day competitions are just around the corner and I am so happy I was asked to be a judge a few years ago. Spring would just not be the same for me without participating in this competition. I look forward to these competition days to talk with and learn from students who are passionate about their projects. While I truly enjoy the website and documentary projects, I find that no matter what category I judge the presentation of knowledge by the students is incredible. Please consider being a judge for this worthwhile program.
Margaret Chase Smith Bingo is a big hit with our field trip students.
One of many field trip groups visiting the Library this year.
One of the many unique artifacts in storage at the Library.
Research Roundup
by Nicole Potter
Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
First, I would like to highlight the fantastic response the Margaret Chase Smith Library has received to our interactive exhibition, “Connections to Margaret”! It can be difficult to remember that, despite her long list of credentials and accomplishments, Margaret had many traits, characteristics, habits, and experiences that many of us can relate to. Visitors to the MCS Library are invited to weave threads through the hooks next to the connections they share with Margaret, creating a visual representation of their overlapping interests, lives, and preferences. We’ve had a multitude of visitors engage with “Connections to Margaret '' since it was installed in August 2023 and today some of the most common connections are “Gone Snowshoeing," "Swam in a Lake,” and “Favorite Color is Blue.” Shout out to Kim Nelson, Library Coordinator, for helping students navigate this exhibition while on field trips to the MCS Library!
Second, I am excited to announce an upcoming exhibition of artist Jerri Whitman’s portraits at the Margaret Chase Smith Library! Spurred by her surprise that the only woman whose portrait can be found at the Maine State House is Senator Margaret Chase Smith, which hangs in the Hall of Flags, Whitman is working to paint portraits of every woman who has been elected to the Maine Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. Senate. There have been twenty-five portraits completed so far and the subjects include Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Governor Janet Mills, Sara Gideon, and Dora Pinkham. Previously all of the portraits, except for Senator Smith, were shown at the Maine State House, as a one day pop-up exhibition. Whitman’s portrait of Senator Smith will be shown for the first time to the public at the Margaret Chase Smith Library!
The Library is delighted to host Jerri Whitman’s portraits of Maine female politicians and the exhibition will be on display starting Monday, May 20th, and will remain open until Wednesday, November 27th, 2024. There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Thursday, June 20th, from 4pm to 7pm. We encourage everyone interested to come and visit the Margaret Chase Smith Library while the exhibition is on display. The Margaret Chase Smith Library is open to the public Monday to Friday 10am to 4pm and reservations are highly encouraged for visitors. To make a reservation please call (207) 474-7133. Also, keep your eye out for further programming around the exhibition which will be announced on the Library’s website.
Finally, staff at the MCS Library is also currently developing several other upcoming exhibits. Topics for these include Senator Smith’s connection to the United States Navy Nurse Corps, a lyrical examination of Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and exploration of the media coverage of Senator Smith’s 1964 presidential campaign. Additionally, there are hopes to host another student exhibition this fall.
Updating Collection Storage - Part II
When I wrote my section for the December 2023 newsletter, we were still in the process of moving the artifacts out of the MCS Library basement storage room and into temporary storage. Since then, all artifacts have been moved, the old storage furniture has been disassembled and moved out, the room has been cleaned, new storage furniture has been assembled, and the artifacts have begun to be moved back into the storage room onto the new furniture. Collections care tasks have been incorporated into this workflow, this includes an inventory of the collections stored in the basement and condition surveys of individual artifacts. The new storage furniture that’s been assembled is compact shelving, which is designed for high-density storage of artifacts and allows us to utilize our limited storage space at the MCS Library most efficiently. We were thrilled to donate the old storage shelving and cabinets to the Skowhegan History House where they can continue to be utilized. We’ve made huge strides!
“Connections to Margaret” interactive exhibit.
Artist Jerri Whitman working in her studio.
Nicole Potter and John Taylor celebrating the completion of the first shelving unit with a ribbon cutting.
Upcoming events
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