LEWISTON – The Lewiston Public Library has received a grant of $2,593 from the Maine State Archives, a bureau of the Department of Secretary of State, to preserve and provide access to the historic records of the Union Water Power Co.

The company records were given to the city of Lewiston earlier this year, and the project is expected to be completed by July 2008.

Library Director Rick Speer said, “The Union Water Power Co. played a major role in powering the industrial revolution all along the Androscoggin River corridor, and these records are clearly interrelated with those that are currently held in the library’s archives.”

The library’s holdings include records from the Franklin Co., Bates Manufacturing Co. and the W.S. Libbey Co.

The library plans to hire Christopher Beam, a local archival consultant, to process the collection and create a finding aid – a guide to the collection – for use by future researchers. Beam is the former archivist at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates College.

“Grants such as this support community efforts to protect the stories of our birth, property rights, government and how we lived our lives,” said Maine State Archivist David Cheever.

The project funding came from the Historical Collections Grant Program that is administered by the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board, with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and Maine’s New Century Community Program. The Union Water Power Co. is also donating $3,000 to fund the project.

For more information on the project or the LPL archives, interested individuals may contact Speer at 513-3004 (TTY/TDD: 513-3007). However, due to the lack of archival staffing, the library archives are currently closed to the public.