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The Olive Tree |
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The Olive Tree |
For the UMaine Development Office, almost no gift to the university is too
large, small or unusual.
With that in mind, Hannah Whalen, development officer, recently helped arrange a
unique in-kind gift to UMaine. She matched the bookbinding skills of her father
with the needs of Fogler Library’s Special Collections for repairs to some of
its old books.
Whalen’s father, Jonathan Robbins, is a retired high school English teacher from
Whitefield whose avocation is collecting, repairing and rebinding rare old
books. Special Collections has many volumes of books that date back to the 16th
and 17th centuries. Some are damaged and have broken bindings or torn pages.
Robbins recently repaired a three-centuries-old French Psalter, a book of psalms
with oversized musical notes and Latin lyrics used by church choirs. He
reinforced some of the pages, straightened the warped calfskin cover, and
recovered the spine. The book, bearing the characteristic scent of dust and
aging paper, was published in 1697 in Paris and donated to Special Collections
in the early 1970s.
“This has really been a godsend for us because we just don’t have the money for
book restoration,” says Richard Hollinger, head of Special Collections.
Robbins, a UMaine alum who earned a master’s degree in liberal studies at UMaine
in 1993, says the repaired Psalter is good for another century, and now can be
used for historical research or even in performance by one of the university’s
choral ensembles. “The goal is to make it a useable book,” Robbins says.
Donating skills to UMaine is one form of in-kind giving, Whalen says, but
bookbinding, in this case, “is a very unique in-kind gift, because nothing like
this has ever been done before.”
More common are gifts in the form of labor and materials, such as those donated
for the restoration of the Fogler Library steps and terrace. The UMaine
Development Office receives and coordinates gifts and donations for any number
of immediate needs on campus, including capital improvement projects.
According to Whalen and Patricia Cummings, senior development officer, there are
many talented people in Maine who may not realize their skills could be valuable
to the university.
“We like people to be involved and share their talents,” Cummings says. ”There
are as many ways to donate as there are talents. The book restoration was using
a very specific talent to help the university.”
Whalen says all gifts are welcome. The development office also has a list of
naming opportunities for a variety of campus projects, she adds.
“These naming opportunities are designed to match an array of donor interests,”
she says. “In whatever capacity a donor chooses to give to the university, the
Development Office is ready to help coordinate and facilitate the entire giving
and recognition process.”
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