Many people now have the equivalent of some of the finest, most extensive libraries in the world tucked into a side pocket of their favorite easy chair. Electronic readers – Amazon’s Kindle and its competitors – have been spotted online at prices under $100. Most such devices can store more reading material than anyone could consume in a lifetime. And yet, there are more than three dozen public libraries, replete with musty stacks of books, waiting lists for the latest bestsellers, and a long tradition of serving scholars and those who devour Romance novels alike, dotting the landscape of central Maine. And that doesn’t include the repositories at area colleges and universities, and even hospitals.

Depending on which communities one includes in the fluctuating definition of “Central Maine,” there could be at least one old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar library in the region for every 7,500 residents, give or take.

The population of New Vineyard, Maine – a little bit north of Farmington and east of Phillips (both of which have libraries of their own, in addition to that at U.Maine-Farmington) – has a population under 775 folks. It also has a local public library with more than 5,000 volumes and nearly 2,000 transactions a year. It is housed in a small building that resembles a modest double-wide mobile home. Lovell has two public libraries. Auburn established its first library in 1891, and the iconic brick building on Court St. – funded by a grant from Andrew Carnegie, who also donated funds for the Lewiston library building at about the same time as part of his personal commitment to establish public libraries throughout the country – opened in 1904. The original charter of the Auburn library was, according to its web site, to “[have] the best books of reference, and the standard works of belles-lettres, poetry, philosophy, travel, and fiction; to cooperate with the school; and to serve the entire community.”

The inter-connectivity between libraries in Maine, both public and academic; electronic and physical (the opportunity to order books from the repository of a building in some town other than your own), gives central Mainers access to resources of immeasurable breadth and depth, diversity and scope. The Minerva catalog, described as a “library without walls,” provides access to more than six million items from more than fifty Maine libraries. SOLAR (Statewide OnLine Requesting and lending) enables libraries to make their own collections visible online, and it facilitates inter-library lending and distribution. And while access now includes DVDs, audiobooks, magazines, newspapers, as well as, through on-site computer stations, virtually the entirety of the World Wide Web, perhaps the most enduring role of libraries has been as focal points of community.

The expansion of the Auburn library, completed in 2006, added several community meeting rooms, and there is now a popular new café in the building, as well. The Marsden Hartley Cultural Center, part of the Lewiston library expansion in 2005, offers a wide range of cultural programming and resources, in addition to space, including lectures, films, concerts, coffeehouses, book discussion groups, and a computer lab. Special resources and programs for school kids have been part of the libraries’ specific missions from their inception, and in addition to the services offered in their own building, the Lewiston library provides free or discounted passes to some half-dozen children’s museums and attractions including the Children’s Discovery Museum (Augusta), Children’s Museum of Maine (Portland), the Maine Wildlife Park (Gray), and others. Countless Maine kids continue to be transfixed, while sitting cross-legged on the floor, by story-tellers, magicians, jugglers and other kid-oriented entertainment; but the main attraction remains books, and reading patterns established before keyboard skills are acquired last forever. The libraries remain crowded on school-day afternoons by youngsters who combine electronic and hard-copy research in the same facility.

While many of the dozens of libraries in Central Maine are as modest as the one in New Vineyard – many look like barely converted garages – others, regardless of size, are iconic structures in their own right, integral elements of local infrastructure. Take, for instance, the Hamlin Memorial Library in South Paris, built in 1822, which was originally the local jail. Now subordinated to the larger (40,000 titles) Paris Public Library, the Hamlin serves primarily as a museum. But it still circulates books and remains both a functioning library and a vibrant remnant of the building splurge at the turn of the 20th century that populated Central Maine with the fabulous network of libraries that continue to provide access to learning, entertainment and cultural resources, updated with the technology of the 21st Century, to now a sixth generation of Mainers.

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