Share Local History: Learn how to share YOUR collections

Share Local History: Learn how to share YOUR collections Share Local History: Learn how to share YOUR collections

Maine Memory Network empowers Maine communities, institutions, and individuals to engage and share their history.

Institutions / Organizations
Institutions / Organizations

Historical societies, museums, archives, libraries, municipalities, hospitals, churches, and other organizations can add items to Maine Memory Network.

Individuals
Individuals

Individuals and families can upload their historical items and collections to Maine Memory Network.

Library Collaboration
Library Collaboration

Libraries play a vital role in helping patrons learn about local history. Here's how you can help community members get involved with Maine Memory Network.

Educators / Schools
Educators / Schools

Through Maine Memory Network, access thousands of primary source materials from all over Maine to create online exhibits and in-classroom and community-based projects.

How It Works

Maine Historical Society (MHS) provides training, support, and the technological infrastructure. Organizations and individuals across the state (Contributing Partners) select items in their collections; scan or take digital photographs of those items; and then, through their own Maine Memory Network (MMN) account, use a web browser to upload, catalog, manage, and interpret the material online. Individuals may also send items without creating an account. All participation is free.

Why Participate?

Maine Memory Network is a resource and jumping off point for a broad, quickly growing audience of people interested in Maine and its history, including researchers, teachers, students, planners, professionals, tourists, and the general public. It includes contributions from more than 270 organizations and individuals, and receives 500,000 unique visitors each year.

Participation helps contributors reach new audiences within their communities and beyond, deepen local partnerships, develop a broad range of skills and capacities, and energize the practice of local history.

Get Involved

There are many ways to participate, including:

  • Sharing your comments about each item: Every items and exhibit on Maine Memory has a comment area at the bottom of every page. If you have additional information or just want to share your comments about an item or an online exhibit, enter your comments and start a discussion.
  • Sharing Collections: Becoming a Contributing Partner enables organizations and individuals to digitize, catalog, and share historical collections online. You select historical items, create high resolution scans or photographs, complete catalog records, and upload them to Maine Memory.
  • Building an online exhibit: Once historical items have been uploaded, MMN offers a variety of flexible tools that enable contributors to create exhibits that tell stories and explore topics, themes, and events in Maine's history.
  • Building a website: Maine Memory Network also allows contributors and community teams to build their own websites within the network. Organizations use these websites to share information about their collections and programs. Local teams use these tools to gather and provide centralized access to a wide variety of information about their local history.

Getting Started