A small library in coastal Maine is nearing a goal in its plans to add world-class maritime research materials to its collection.
Friend Memorial Public Library in Brooklin has been raising money to build an addition that it needs to house more than 6,000 volumes of books and other reference materials that were compiled over the past 50 years by WoodenBoat, a local company best known for its magazine but which also operates a seasonal boat-building school.
The library is in the final stretch of its fundraising campaign for the expansion project, which aims to raise at least $2.5 million, library officials said. The new wing, which will roughly double the size of the small library, will be called the Anne and Maynard Bray Maritime Research Center, in honor of a local couple who held longtime separate roles as WoodenBoat’s librarian and technical editor.
WoodenBoat’s founder, Jon Wilson, sold the company in 2022 to its top two managers but retained ownership of the research collection, which includes books, plans and periodicals. This collection, which includes rare volumes and attracts interest from wooden-boat enthusiasts and scholars from around the world, is being donated by Wilson to the Brooklin library.
The library’s new maritime research wing also will house photographic images created by Benjamin Mendlowitz, who last year donated to the library his collection of 155,000 slides of wooden sailing yachts, many of them published over decades in his Calendar of Wooden Boats and in multiple magazines.
Brooklin is home to several local boat building companies that operate independently of WoodenBoat and which help to preserve the local knowledge base and the town’s self-professed status as the “wooden boat capital of the world,” library officials have said.
Craftspeople at those companies have accessed WoodenBoat’s reference collection in the past and will continue to be able to do so once the expansion project is complete and the volumes are moved to their new home, 1 1/2 miles away from WoodenBoat’s campus off Naskeag Point Road.
Library officials have not said how soon they hope to begin construction or when the addition might be complete. The plans also call for a paved parking lot on the east side of the library, via an easement on a neighboring property, and possibly a pergola and courtyard for hosting outdoor events.
With the project, they also intend to modernize the building’s heating and ventilation systems and to address some other overdue maintenance issues, library officials have said.
