Go and do:

What: Thank-you party for Roger Ouellette

When: 6-7 p.m. Tuesday, April 10

Where: Treat Memorial Library, Main Street, Livermore Falls

LIVERMORE FALLS — Roger Ouellette has always been impressed with how libraries enrich their communities.

“They provide a little education, research, recreation, communication and culture,” the 79-year-old Livermore Falls man said Wednesday.

It’s one of the few places in town where you can acquire a little culture, he said.

Ouellette, who has lived in town most of his life, has been on the Livermore Falls Library Association for 35 years beginning in January 1977. Twenty-seven of those years were as president. He stepped down earlier this year from that position and intends to stay as a trustee for a little while to provide some continuity to the nine-member board.

Cindy Rehagen Langewisch is now president of the Board of Trustees.

Association members are giving Ouellette a thank-you party from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 10, at the Treat Memorial Library on Main Street.

He has been a patron of the library since boyhood, he said. He got started because he loves to read for recreation.

“That’s what got me hooked,” Ouellette said.

He still reads, he said, but prefers short articles now. Reader’s Digest and other magazines are his preferred picks.

A lot has changed during his tenure.

“I’m a dinosaur. I’m stuck in the old ways and today libraries are more about technology than anything else,” Ouellette said. He mentioned he read an article recently that Encyclopaedia Britannica will no longer publish encyclopedias in print version. There will still be online versions, he said. The publisher announced in March that after 244 years the encyclopedia will not be printed anymore.

“Libraries have to keep up with technology today. And let’s face it, I’m not with it,” he said. “We have been fortunate that all our computers have been acquired with grant money. So the town hasn’t had to subsidize our move into technology.”

Thirty-five years ago, it was more about books.

“For a long time, you could judge a library by the number of books and how frequently they were used,” Ouellette said. “Today that is not so much a factor because rather than go to our resource encyclopedias, you can get the same information online. That’s the biggest change is how information is accessed.”

People still enjoy reading books, he said, as he looked at the shelves around him full of books.

“It didn’t diminish taking out books,” he said. “They are just as important today as they were then.”

The library’s membership grew last year, which is impressive, considering Main Street was under construction spring through fall, he said.

Ouellette hesitated to find an answer to why he volunteered so long with the library and helping to oversee its operations. It took him a while to come up with an answer.

“I just didn’t know enough to retire,” he said.

Seriously, he said, it is because libraries enrich communities and he wanted the town to have a library that continued to offer that experience to future generations.

“Our area of responsibility is the operation of the library. What kept me here for 35 years, I can’t tell you. I guess it goes back to what libraries do for the community,” Ouellette said. “It was a lot of work, a lot of changes but changes come slowly and are easily adopted.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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