OGUNQUIT MEMORIAL LIBRARY
2022 ANNUAL REPORT
Ogunquit Memorial Library’s Mission is to (a) offer a collection that reflects the diverse interests of our community, including nearby towns and visitors through a variety of print, electronic, digital and emerging media, (b) promote literacy and lifelong learning in a welcoming environment, (c) address the educational, recreational and cultural interests of our community, and (d) conserve Ogunquit’s written history and promote our local authors.
We honor our mission by offering a wide collection of contemporary fiction and non-fiction books available to our patrons as hard copies and digitally through our cloudLibrary application. Our patrons are made up of residents of Ogunquit as well as visitors to Ogunquit and everything in between. We have summer patrons who read with us all season long as they stay at their vacation houses, residents and locals from surrounding towns who love borrowing from our cute little library as well as borrowers who are here for a short time but couldn’t get through the week without a book. We are also able to offer a wider circulation through our inter-library loan program because our affiliation with the Maine State Library. Our own collection of 10,220 items becomes upwards of 500,000+ items available to you with the additional collections of cloudLibrary, Portland Public Library, plus the 10 other libraries in our consortium.
There are learning opportunities for young and old. We have a summer story hour for toddlers. The monthly book club and our Gabby Gathering programming meet year-round.
We began our summer story hour in 2021 as a bi-weekly program and it was so popular with local and visiting families that we expanded it to a weekly event in 2022. In addition to new families we had many returning vacationing families this year. This summer we started an adult book club that meets monthly, it has had great success and high attendance. Our Gabby Gathering programs cover a variety of interests that attract attendees from all over the southern NH/ME region.
Over the past two years we have paid close attention to the interests and needs of our community and have focused our programming towards those items to best serve our local population. In 2022, we received funding from AARP Maine that allowed us to have an educational series on aging. This 7-week program was called Plan Ahead & Age Well. The series included talks on estate planning, navigating Medicare, dementia care, and other topics presented by local experts. These programs were will attended. We will be presenting more programing directed toward our elderly community to fill this demonstrated need.
Another popular local interest is arts & crafts, which makes sense with Ogunquit’s long history as an artist colony. We received a wonderful memorial donation from the Armbruster family in 2021 which allowed us to update and add to our already healthy collection of art and crafts books. In 2022 we were able to add a weekly Book Arts group, that focuses on book binding and papermaking, as well as a Fiber Arts group that meets monthly and includes sewing, knitting and other fiber arts.
OML has long been dedicated to the preservation and promotion of its local legends and regional celebrities. Along with an extensive collection of local historic materials, which is available for public perusal here at the library, we started a monthly Ogunquit Historic Group that meets to remember and record years of local yore, the kind that is passed down through generations and may not be found in a book. We also invite and encourage local authors to come share their work here at the library. Children’s authors join us each summer to read to their small fans during story hour. We held events for local adult authors this year, and we make it point to include local authors in our Maine collection.
We continued to address the needs of the building and lawn which requires ongoing upkeep and maintenance at the ripe ole age of 125 years. We have started the process of changing our non-profit status to another non-profit category to enable us to received grants specifically aimed for the upkeep of historic buildings. In addition to that, we have a wonderful group of volunteers, 18 at last count, that help us throughout the year with gardening, seasonal decorating, book repair, book sale events and much more. In fact, our volunteers have logged 400+ hours this year alone.
On behalf of the Board of Trustees and our staff I would like to thank the community for their generosity and continued support.
Respectfully submitted,
David Weare, Director
Ogunquit Memorial Library