the Olive Tree
Winter 2003  Volume 10 Number 2

  Greetings from Dean Elaine Albright
In this issue: Fall semester at the University of Maine is wonderful. The campus is at its most beautiful with fall colors and the slower pace of summer is replaced by the energy of students and faculty engaging in dialogue, research, and discovery. Throughout the summer library staff prepared for the anticipated increase in student numbers and have spent a great deal of their time perfecting new services and equipment to introduce as a welcome back to campus.
    The 2003 academic year is one of many successes for the library and its staff. Library staff successfully applied for over $500,000 in Federal and State partnership grants to make Fogler collections stronger and more available to users. Projects like the Maine Music Box, discussed in more detail in this newsletter, expand the Fogler Library's ability to provide information in all formats to its immediate clientele as well as to schools and libraries throughout the state. Two grants received by the staff in the Special Collections Department will allow more manuscript collections to be digitized and accessed via the Web.
With the help of Representative Rosen of Bucksport, and Gary Nichols, the Maine State Librarian, Fogler Library received $1 million from the Maine legislature to purchase statewide accessible online library materials. The money will be spent over two years to purchase the EBSCOHOST suite of databases for school, public, and academic libraries throughout Maine. Those of you who live in Maine can also access these databases from your home by visiting (http://libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/). EBSCO databases are the most popular and highly used resource in the library.

We have installed a wireless network that allows students to use their laptop computers anywhere in the library and be connected to the campus network. The wireless connection is powerful enough to allow students to sit outside on the library patio or on the Mall, and still be able to connect to the material in the library and in other buildings on campus. A limited number of wireless equipped laptops are available for checkout to students from Fogler Library's Media Resource Center.

The Library Media Resource Center has been expanded to include a twelve seat viewing room equipped to handle DVDs, videos and laser videodisk technology. The new space, located on the first floor of the library was made possible through a gift from long time library friend, Thomas Lynch. It has quickly become a favorite of students and faculty alike.

Several important new collections have been supported and donated to the library by library friends. These collections include an audio book collection, operating records from Halls Mills in Whiting, Maine, dating back from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and the Papers of
Margaret Sanger, birth control activist, covering the years from 1900-1966. These papers will provide primary research material for faculty and students in communications, history, sociology and women's studies.

The first semester of the academic year has been a busy and successful time at Fogler Library, and we expect that next semester will be equally exciting and productive. I hope some of you will have the time to visit us in the near future. I would love to continue this dialogue while at the same time giving you a tour of our facilities. Thank you for your past support. I hope you are pleased with what we are doing and you will continue to support us into the future.

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