 Hello everyone. Welcome to the Main Charitable Mechanics Association and Mechanics Hall Library. My name is Sam Matiosian. I'm the president of the Main Charitable Mechanics Association. And we're here to announce the new marine collection at the Main Charitable Mechanics Library. The Main Charitable Mechanics Association was founded in 1815. And it was originally for the artisan and craftsman class in Portland. So it included people like ship makers and rope makers and blacksmiths and carpenters. And the people who made all of the things in Portland and in Maine. And the library here exists basically because that group of people at the time didn't have a lot of access to books. So it was before the public library and at the time there were private libraries in the homes of usually wealthy people. And so if you were in the working creative class, you often didn't have access to books. And so the organization sort of banded together in order to eventually build this building and to create the library. And that was I believe in 1857. And eventually the library was moved upstairs I think around 1886 in a major renovation of the building. And so that's the library that we're in today. And the collection in the library historically has been a general purpose collection including fiction, nonfiction, history, philosophy. But in modern times we've found that there is an interest amongst the sort of new generation of the membership of the mechanics to have a little bit more of a focus on craftsmanship. We have a public library. People have access to lots and lots of books via the internet and Amazon. And so we've been discussing as a board over the last few years about whether or not it would be possible to shift the collection here in that direction a little bit. So we were pretty excited when Alex Agnew with Ocean Navigator came to talk to us about this collection of marine books that they had had that includes topics on the science of building marine crafts, navigating, and a number of other interesting topics in that space. And we thought that fit really well with sort of A, the history of the organization and B, the direction that we were hoping to take it. We're really hoping that the Main Charitable Mechanics Association will continue to thrive in the coming years. And we're hoping to continue to build the community in Portland of the people who are passionate about making things and providing them with useful pieces of information and space to do that kind of work. One of the lines in the original mission that we kept in the updated mission was that the Main Charitable Mechanics Association exists to support the diffusion of useful knowledge. And that's one of those things that just, it's sort of always stuck missing you. How do we, what is, you know, useful knowledge? But the notion of making things and of a particular kind of knowledge being useful for the progress of civilization was sort of core to the original mission. And that's what we hope to continue. So, we have a few other people speaking. Alex Agnew with Ocean Navigator will introduce the gift and, you know, how they came to have this collection. We're going to have Anestes Fodiades, who is the outgoing chair of the Library Committee and a member of the board here at Main Charitable. Pat Larabee, who is the librarian for Main Charitable and Pam Plumb, who is chair of the programming committee at Main Charitable. So, without further ado, thank you for coming, everyone, and I'd like to introduce Alex Agnew. Thanks, Sam. It's great to, I've never met you. It's great to see that there's visionary leadership at the helm here. It's also fantastic to be back in this beautiful room. I just love being here. I've been the publisher of Ocean Navigator and Professional Mariner for 15 years and worked at the magazines for 30 years. And 30 years ago, we started building a collection of marine books. Some of them came through as review copies. But then once they started coming in, once we created this library, books started to flow in at the rate of, I don't know, five a week or something. And so we ended up with a pretty enormous collection of books, most of which are in the fields as Sam has already alluded to of shipbuilding, rope making he referred to, navigation, seamanship, meteorology, mostly vessel operations and management. In 1991, we started a magazine called Professional Mariner, which is for licensed ship captains and engineers, licensed by the Coast Guard. There's an enormous coming retirement wave, and we're going to need a lot of new youngsters joining our industry. So, as much as we loved our library, which for us was a private library in our offices here in Portland, we decided it made a lot more sense to make it public. And we were absolutely thrilled to have it be part of the Makers Hall and the Marine Charitable Mechanics Association. Our offices are only a few steps away. We walked here to this event so we can still visit our collection. But now we can share it with all of you and your friends and your children and your grandchildren. And so we're really, really excited about that. I don't want to scare you all, the librarians here, Pat, but there's a lot more books out there that may come as part of this collection, and we hope as part of collections of others here. We have a chart collection of the entire world. We haven't even talked about it. We have photographs. We have magazines. So we think that this library can become something truly special, and it already is. It's the only marine, it's the only private publicly accessible marine library of general interest in the state. So it's specialized, but it's also very broad. It's for yachtsmen who want to learn how to sail around the world, for kids who want to get into our industry. So today is the first day that we're announcing that this collection is public. However, it has been public now for almost a month. The library has made it fully accessible so that anybody who wants to come down can come down this afternoon during library hours. I think one of the things that we hope with this collection is that we'll also find funding so that the library can be kept open more than just the few hours that it is now. Right now it's open about 15 hours a week. We hope that someday it'll be open 40 hours a week, including Saturday mornings, so that kids can use it. So with that, I'd just like to say thank you for taking the collection on. And welcome to all of you out there who want to use it. And I'd just like to introduce Nestis, who's the chair of the library, and thank him. Thank you, Alex. I think your donation has been a fantastic addition to the library. I'm excited about it on several levels. One, it serves our mission of building a repository for the diffusion of useful knowledge, and I think the library itself can be a very powerful tool for that. As you spoke to, I think that the start of this marine collection is going to provide a great foundation and we'll find other donors, other people who want to help build that capacity and build that resource of maker-related marine topics for portlanders and manors to use. I think also you've been instrumental in getting us to think maybe a little differently than we had before, that this collection gives us an example of how a maker community can engage with the MCMA, and particularly with its library, and expand the resource we have here. So I think we're starting to think differently about how we might talk to other groups, other groups that may have private libraries that want to share them with a broader community that want to invest in this work that we're doing here at the MCMA to build a resource and to build a community among makers and craftsmen. So thank you very much for the collection, and we look forward to working with you on it. I'm Pat Laraby. I'm the librarian here. And I remember well the day that Anestis and I went down to Ocean Navigator to look at the books. It was in late July, and it was a very exciting time actually. They're beautiful books. I looked at them and thought it was a great idea as did Anestis, and I also realized it would be a lot of work. But I was kind of up for the challenge, and so we put the plan into action. And 53 books were delivered with the help of, I think Art was one of them, delivered in early August. I think it was around the 12th, and we started working on the books. Now I knew I already had two volunteers, but they have their jobs to do. So I knew I needed two more volunteers, and they just kind of popped up out of the sky. And one of them was Connie Harrison. Come up here, Connie. Connie Harrison had volunteered here before, and the time was right for her to volunteer. So she came on board, and she's been the dynamo that drove us to do what we've done in a mere four months, actually. She unpacked the 53 boxes, wrote an initial card on them, and then she drove me because I had to get them on the shelf. So I had cleared the shelf, done some serious weeding. Beverly, wherever she is, she helped me with withdrawing the books. We handled a lot of books. We actually withdrew about a thousand books. It was fiction that no longer popular, no longer really important. We still do have fiction in the A's and B's, but not as many as we did. And then Carolyn came on the scene, Carolyn hiding in the back there. She was one of the two that I needed that just appeared, basically. She pulls the cards, she files the cards. There's a lot of handling with withdrawing books and also accessing new ones. So I took the cards that Connie made on all the new books, and we started a special file. And so we are at the point now where we have them on the shelf. There are some of them in a specific alphabetical order, the A's, the B's, the C's. The rest of them, we can find them. The D's are together, the A's and so forth. So if there is a specific book that we want, we can find it. Donna has the job of typing a list. And so she's been working away at that. So if you push her, there's always a pile of her books to do, but the end is in sight with these books, it actually is. So we've gained a lot of ground. We have them on the shelf, they're accessible. I have cataloged, I'm not sure how many, 25 or 50. There's a paper on the table over there for any of you who would like to check and see. Of those that are cataloged, any of them can circulate. If you see something, you're welcome to look down the aisle where they are. If anybody wants to take any of them out, we can do a quick set up so you can take them so that you can take them out. They're beautiful books. If you look around the room, I've displayed as many as I could find room for the C there, for example, and just all around beautiful, beautiful titles, exceptional books. One that so impressed me was a beautiful book on plankton. It's just kind of like whoever heard of a book on plankton, a gorgeous book. I guess if you're a mariner, you're involved with the sea. It's a very common place, and I knew what it was, but I never expected to see a whole, beautiful books on tall ships. But there are also books that the ordinary person would like, a non-marine type person, just good reading. This is an example of a way with sailor in search of the real Tristan Jones. I had no idea who he is, but I'm getting an education on the sea and mariners. And I brought this because in each of the books, we plan to put a book plate, which it says Ocean Navigator Marine Collection 2016. So they'll all be designated. They'll be kept separate in the collection for now, and they're easily accessible to everybody. Did I leave anybody else? I don't think so. So now my job is to catalog the books. I'm working on it. I figure it'll take me about a year to finish it. That's a lot of books. But I still have my volunteers to do the filing and do the typing and so forth. So we're doing pretty good. So that's all I have to say on this subject. Other than any time you want to come in and look at, find something, you can check it out if you remember. Thank you. Pat and her crew are the ones who make it all possible, actually. It would still be in boxes on the first floor, but we're not for these great folks who have made it all come together here. My name is Pam Plum. I'm the chair of the programming committee here. And my only addition to today's comments is that we see this collection as the beginning of some programmatic activities, which will be in the field of makers in the marine industry. And we're only in the process now of doing our research to understand what's already being done. And then we'll have a much better idea how programming from our particular organization can be useful and can be helpful in that field. And so that's really the only point that I wanted to make, that we're going to run with this collection and develop some programming to help the industry, to bring young people into the industry, to in general spread the knowledge of what goes on. So it's an enormous industry in Maine. I also have the pleasure of doing a couple of things. One, we have a letter here from the Maine Maritime Museum, someone who had hoped to come and couldn't come. And so it's a brief letter, I promise. I will read it to you. It's from Amy Lent, the Executive Director of the Maine Maritime Museum. Dear Mr. Matiosian, otherwise known as Sam. Maine Maritime Museum is proud to endorse Navigator Publishing's gift of its collection of marine trade books to the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association Library in Portland. The donation testifies to the vibrancy of Maine's maritime industries in the 21st century. These trades, especially boat building fishing and commercial exchange, are the continuation of a Maine tradition of maritime endeavor that was already thousands of years old when the Wabanaki greeted the first European to come ashore in the 16th century. Maine Maritime Museum wishes the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association and those who use this Maritime Library every success as they add to the legacy of Maine's rich maritime history. So that is the letter from them. We have a few folks that I would like to just briefly introduce. First of all, anyone who's on the board of Maine Charitable Mechanic Association, would you just raise your hand so people know where you are and they can come and talk to you. Some here, here. There's one, and over here. Feel free to chat with those folks afterwards and ask about the organization and what it's up to. I'd also like to introduce Susan Swanton, who's here, right there, who's the Director of the Maine Maritime Trades Association. We've had some wonderful conversations about how this organization could be useful. Tim Queenie, Ocean Navigator. Where are you right there? Thank you, Ocean Navigator. We're glad you're here. Michael McAllister, Interim Director of Sail, and there you are, right there. And Maddie Oates. Maddie Oates is the Director of the Tall Ships Program in Maine. And did you want to say just a quick word about the connection to this? We're just very pleased to be able to be connected with this. We're very happy to be working in the offices of Ocean Navigator, which is how we have our connection and our Board President is also Alex Agnew. So we, as has been said before, we recognize that there is the potential for a workplace shortage of maritime professionals in the near future. And we're a maritime state. That's what we do. We go to sea and we go to sea in boats. So hopefully with this library and the accessibility of it and the ever-expanding outreach of the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association we'll be able to bring more young people in, get them interested in the sea that's right at their doorsteps. And Tall Ships Port in our mission, among many things, is to connect our youth with the sea. And one of those ways is on boats and the other way is through books because some of the greatest stories I've ever written have been written about people going to sea. So hopefully with the opening of this library we can make those stories more well known. So thank you again for having us here. Thank you, Annie. Thank you. And one of the other connections we're trying to make, of course, is with young people who would be interested, potentially, in the marine trades. And we also have here Linda Roth from Thornton Academy. And they do career exploration. And they have had a number of programs involving boats and boat making and pieces of boats. I've also had the pleasure of visiting at Paz, the same kind of program. And there is actually a lot going on. So finally, I just want to thank people for coming. I want you to explore the collection, which you can see some of it around you. You can go back, as Pat invited you, back to the place where the rest of the books are. We want you to enjoy Maine Charitable. And if you aren't a member, you might even think about joining. I'd be happy to help you do that. People are welcome to come use this collection in the library during library hours. I think the general public can do that. But if you want to take a book out, then we'd love to help you become a member.