What is the Margaret Chase Smith Library?
The Margaret Chase Smith Library, (http://www.mcslibrary.org/) located in Skowhegan, ME on the banks of the Kennebec River, is much more than a traditional library. It is a research facility, rather than a lending library, and an educational facility sponsoring numerous visits for audiences ranging from elementary school children to students working on their dissertations. It also houses a museum. The library opened in 1983 and was built as an addition to Senator Smith's residence. This means that touring her beautiful well-preserved home is also an option when visiting the facility. |
| Margaret Chase Smith Library |
The library is funded under the auspices of the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation, and the University of Maine Orono has administered the library since January 2012. Prior to that, the library was administered by Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. (More on the library's relationship with its administrators later.)
But who is Margaret Chase Smith?
Senator Smith is considered to be one of the most successful politicians in Maine history. She was a woman who dared to believe that she could be successful in an age that was very much a man's world. She was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1940 and to the Senate in 1948. She served as a Senator through 1972. She was the first woman in the US to be elected to both the House and Senate. As you can see from the pin below, she was also the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the US presidency in 1964 (http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu/about-us-2/who-was-margaret-chase-smith/).
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| This pin is a sample of the artifacts housed by the MCS library and museum. It appears on the Maine Memory Network (http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/12114) in conjunction with a project involving the two entities. (More on MCS's relationships with other institutions upcoming.) |
Before visiting the library itself, I visited the web site (pictured below and found at http://www.mcslibrary.org/). The first thing I noticed was its Facebook presence. More digging unearthed several more social networking connections, but we'll save those for another post.
The web site encompasses information for the library as well as the museum. The site map is categorized under biographical information, general information, and programs sub-divided under library, education, museum, and public policy.
I searched under policies, subject headings, reference files, audio recordings, interviews, case studies, and documents and while I found a few digitized records, for the most part what I found were PDF lists of the library's contents. This is quite different than what we have all come to expect when researching. This reminds us that what we have here is indeed a research facility that some would also refer to as an archive. These materials do not circulate. This means that researchers must either personally conduct their search at the library or they may request material from the librarian who (depending on the request) can either scan and send them or copy (at no charge) and mail them.
Requests come over the phone and via email. MCS is dependent on a fast and reliable internet service and they use TDS high-speed internet to meet their needs. When I met with Angie she gave me an example of a request she had received the morning of my visit. A researcher from England emailed a request for information and Angie could quickly and easily comply. Apparently international requests are not unusual. Senator Smith traveled the globe and met with notable leaders such as Winston Churchill (see below) so her political affiliations and contributions extend beyond the US.
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| Senator Smith meets with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Minister Anthony Eden of Great Britain | (Photo from MCS Library collection found at http://www.mcslibrary.org/bio/biolong.htm) |
I couldn't help but notice as I walked into the library that, besides the computers used by staff, only one Dell computer sat at the end of a long and sleek conference table. So naturally, I had to ask where the others were. Angie told me that there's no need for others. Apparently when most researchers visit the library, they bring their own laptop. This is very prevalent when students visit as school groups. The library has WiFi, making it convenient for all visitors. One of the benefits of the new-found affiliation with UMaine is that the library gets to use its IT services whose staff can either go to MCS to address a technical problem or work from their desktop at the university.
Within the physical library, according to http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/libcoll.html, the "collection is arranged into ten categories: articles, audio, books, cartoons, Front Office notes, photographs, reference scrapbooks, Statements and Speeches, and Washington and You." You may remember from the first post that there are about 300,000 items within the library and most of them are in 90 fireproof file cabinets. Recall that few of these items are digitized. This is something seemingly insurmountable with this number of documents. Time and costs are both impediments and there is no plan currently in place to tackle such a project.
Researchers can access video recordings (at right) and audio recordings as well.
One such recording is when Senator Smith appeared on Face the Nation in 1956 with a memorable guest (http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/interview.htm).
Can you guess who she is?
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| It's Eleanor Roosevelt! |
Let's leave this section with an audio clip that's available on the MCS site and accessible here through
the Maine Memory Network (once you get there, click play button for recording).
http://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/294/slideshow/303/display?use_mmn=&prev_object_id=557&prev_object=page&slide_num=4.
Enjoy - and see you next time when we look at some of the online connections of the Margaret Chase Smith Library.
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