WILLOW CREEK — The Willow Creek Free Public Library opened its historical archives to public research access Monday, making hundreds of documents, photographs, and ledgers available for the first time outside of appointment-only viewings.
The collection includes mill payroll records from the Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company dating to its founding in 1903, plat maps of the original town settlement, daguerreotypes of early millworkers, and a complete run of the Willow Creek Gazette from 1891 to the present. Town librarian Doris Kim said the materials had been stored in a locked room for decades due to preservation concerns.
“We had the town’s history sitting in filing cabinets that nobody could touch,” said Kim, who has served as librarian since 2002. “We have spent two years organizing, digitizing the most fragile items, and creating finding aids. Now anyone can walk in and request a folder.”
The library, a 1904 Andrew Carnegie building at the corner of Main and Elm Streets, installed a dedicated research table with a magnifying lamp and cotton gloves for handling materials. A $6,000 grant from the Maine State Library funded archival-quality storage boxes and a dehumidifier.
Kim, who holds a master’s degree in library science from Simmons University in Boston and spent a decade at the Portland Public Library before coming to Willow Creek, also maintains the library’s local history collection — bound Gazette volumes, town reports going back to 1850, and a scrapbook of Ice-Out memorabilia that she updates each year. She has indexed every Gazette Ice-Out article by date and winner across three binders, a project she undertook on her own time.
Researchers must register at the front desk and agree to handling rules. The archive is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Kim said she has already received inquiries from a genealogist in Ohio and a graduate student at the University of Maine.