Two Libraries: Part Two

Dorcas Library

28 Main Street, Prospect Harbor207-963-4027

The Dorcas Library is another gem of a small library. There’s the perfect view from inside and out to the cove in Prospect Harbor. (It’s listed on the Maine’s Schoodic National Scenic Byway site.)

There’s also the fantastic name and library origin story. The library, like many others in Maine, was started informally by a group of women, the Prospect Harbor Dorcas Society, who met for quilting. (Dorcas was a disciple “always doing good and helping the poor,” known particularly for her sewing. Acts 9:36–43.) The first iteration of the library was two rooms: one where members worked on their quilting, and the second for the library.

And of course there are the carefully arranged collections. The kids’ room—again—was an immediate success. Bea and her mother Hillary (pictured at Dorcas above) added to their penguin interest via Little Penguins, a Steve Parish storybook. (And I just can’t go by penguins without mentioning this new find from our own library, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffries.) 

And the adults found special interests in the extensive Maine collection. Alex found Pine, Potatoes and People: The Story of Aroostook, written in 1948 by Helen Hamlin. I read a bit of Giants of the Dawnland: Ancient Wabanaki Tales, collected by Alice Mead and Arnold Neptune, and I am hoping to revisit it by interlibrary loan. I also discovered Jennifer LeClair’s series of windjammer mysteries set on the Maine coast, which I’m now planning to read—books I might not have known about but for seeing them in the Dorcas Maine collection.

Hillary read a pamphlet on the Maine sardine industry. (To see this again, it seems we’d have to go to another library that holds it; none seem to be available on Minerva for loan.) Inspired by Hillary’s interest—and by searching for sardine—I discovered a lovely series of essays, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress by Alison Hawthorne Deming, which I’m reading now. (The “sardine dress” was a massively sequined dress designed by Yves St. Laurent—he didn’t call it that, but others did.)

This trip to two such great small libraries is giving a whole new meaning to “small but beautiful.”