PORTLAND – The Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England is sponsoring a traveling exhibition of artist’s books created by Rebecca Goodale.

Goodale’s books, some of which are part of this writers’ collection, are from a project about Maine’s threatened and endangered species.

The show begins Jan. 3 at the Portland Public Library. An opening reception will be held at the Lewis Gallery there beginning at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8.

A lecture, “Invitation to Wonder,” by Professor Linda J. Docherty, of the Bowdoin College Department of Art History, will follow at 7:30 in the Rines Auditorium.

The snow date is Jan. 15.

Goodale will speak informally about her work in the Lewis Gallery at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31.

After leaving the Portland library, the show will travel until July 2005. Other locations will include the art galleries at University of Maine at Machias, the Blake Library at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, UNE’s Biddeford campus, Camden Public Library, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library at Bowdoin College, Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic and the Atrium Gallery at Lewiston-Auburn College.

The Maine Women Writers Collection owns five of Goodale’s books from this project and may eventually acquire the entire collection.

Located in the Abplanalp Library on UNE’s Westbrook College campus, the collection has published and non-published literary, cultural and social history sources. These are by and about women authors, either native or residents of Maine.

Founded in 1959, the collection now has more than 4,000 volumes on more than 500 Maine women writers. It includes correspondence, photographs, personal papers, manuscripts, typescripts, artifacts and audio recordings.

The collection was dedicated as a national Literary Landmark in 1998 by the Friends of Libraries USA.

The traveling exhibition is being done with the support of a New Century Arts and Humanities Grant from the Maine Arts Commission and Maine Humanities Council, and in collaboration with seven other Maine institutions.

All the exhibits and all the lectures associated with the exhibits will be free and open to the public.

For more information, visit www.une.edu/mwwc or call (207) 797-7621, extension 4324.