FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — The Fort Fairfield Public Library has been awarded more than $19,000 to improve its preservation capabilities in its archives room.
The money will be used to obtain new ultraviolet light protectors for the room, as well as a ladder rail for ease of obtaining documents from high places, among other improvements.
Preserving the past is a difficult mission that comes with no shortage of challenges. Documents age and become more frail, and can become very difficult to handle with time. The Fort Fairfield Public Library has accepted this mission of preservation, and created the Jesse Drew Historical and Genealogical archives using a National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency that supports research, preservation, education and public programs for the humanities.
The archives hold older documents and records from the town of Fort Fairfield, as well as from Maine as a whole, including cemetery maps and photo albums, as well as older newspapers and field journals from Col. M Drew, who fought in the American Civil War.
The grant had a total of 937 applicants across the country, but only 292 were funded — three in Maine — and the Fort Fairfield library was the only library among them.
This is the second NEH grant that the Fort Fairfield Library has received. The first was in 2018 to do an assessment of the archives room.
“Everyone’s history is important,” Fort Fairfield Library Director Jennifer Gaenzle said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, and libraries play a key role in preserving that history, not just our library. We have taken it above and beyond, trying to fill a need that we felt was in Aroostook County. This way, it is always there, even if people now aren’t interested in researching it, their children or their grandchildren or their great grandchildren may be interested in knowing. We need to preserve it for them.”
Aid from this grant will also allow the library to look toward future preservation projects. “Looking long term, my ultimate goal is to get the funding to be able to take new scans of all of the original archived newspapers. They are so brittle, they can probably only be opened one more time. We want to take one more scan, and combine what we already have online to get the best possible view of the paper,” Gaenzle said.
The grant provides a great opportunity for the Fort Fairfield library to continue its mission of preservation, so that future generations can investigate the world of the past. More information about the library and its history can be found on the Fort Fairfield public library website.
The Jesse Drew Historical and Genealogical Archives has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.
