Nicole Potter joined the staff in 2021. She earned her B.A. in English Literature and Religious Studies from St. Lawrence University and her M.S. in Library and Information Science from Syracuse University School of Information Studies. Nicole’s specialization is cultural heritage preservation. Previously she worked at cultural institutions in New York, New Mexico, and Alaska, including ones preserving the legacies of other noteworthy Americans such as artist Georgia O'Keefe and author Ernest Hemingway. Immediately prior to starting at the Margaret Chase Smith Library, she was the Regional History Museum Librarian at The Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho. Nicole’s email is npotter@mcslibrary.org
Chris O’Brien, Ph.D., was named Director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in September 2024. Previously, he was Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center in Dickinson, ND; professor of History at the University of Maine at Farmington; Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Technology; and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Kansas. He chaired the Division of Social Science and Business at UMF; served for nearly a decade on the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board; and was a grant-reviewer for the National Historic Records Preservation Commission. A historian of the cultural Cold War, O’Brien is the author of several articles and book chapters on the subject. He earned his doctorate at the University of Kansas and his certificate in Higher Education Management from Harvard. He can be reached at cobrien@mcslibrary.org