Linda Roesler, a new Harpswell resident, said she decided to volunteer because the library offered a way to meet her neighbors and because of her lifelong love of books. Starting this month, Hoebeke said, the library will be open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10 a.m. The push for volunteers has paid off with enough trained people joining the ranks to allow the library to expand its hours. York Maine History Room and into the Moren Memorial Reading Room. For example, she’s working to bring more contemporary Maine authors out of the Robert M. ![]() Since then, Wilkes has focused on adding volunteers and programming, building connections with libraries in Brunswick and Cundy’s Harbor, and beefing up and adjusting the library’s collection. She resigned from the board when its job search identified her as a leading candidate for librarian. She digitized the library’s catalog and subsequently joined the library’s board of trustees in 2022. Wilkes ultimately moved to Orr’s Island full time during the pandemic and started volunteering at the library in late 2020. Her grandmother, Grace Joline Sonne, also worked as a librarian in New York. Her grandfather, Niels Henry Sonne, served as head librarian of the General Theological Seminary in New York City and was a highly regarded expert on the Gutenberg Bible. But there already was a family connection to libraries through her maternal grandparents. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010 with a degree in real estate and land development and went to work for her father’s real estate firm. In 1985, her late parents purchased a little compound of cottages at the southern end of Orr’s Island, where Wilkes lives today. They initially had a place on Potts Point and later bought another cabin elsewhere on Harpswell Neck. ![]() Her family ties to Harpswell date back to the 1840s, when members of her mother’s family first came to summer in Maine. She recalls playing in a former gunpowder magazine replete with graffiti and signatures left by Union soldiers. Wilkes was born in Virginia and raised in a house built on the site of a Civil War fort that was part of the outer defenses of Washington, D.C. “We are tapping into a tremendous amount of expertise from newcomers and longtime residents of Harpswell.” “She also has pulled in a ton of volunteers, and that is absolutely vital,” Hoebeke added. So far, Hoebeke said, Wilkes has “greatly exceeded our expectations.” He pointed to 30 new library cards that were issued in the first three months after Wilkes took over library operations. She stepped into the role at a challenging time, after the library had parted ways with longtime Librarian Joanne Rogers and had temporarily closed.ĭaniel Hoebeke, president of the nonprofit library’s board of trustees, said Rogers had “served admirably,” adding: “We thought the library was well positioned to expand services to the Harpswell community beyond longtime users, and we were looking for the person best able to accomplish that goal.” Wilkes, 36, has been librarian for almost six months. To tap into as many of these as possible, I see as a key component of our library.” “Our community has such a great wealth of skills, interests and talents, across the spectrum. “The role of a library like ours is to consistently serve all of the community with a variety of resources,” Wilkes says. “I stare at her island - Ragged - every day.”īut her dark eyes really brighten when she starts outlining her numerous plans for a community cornerstone that was established in 1905 and now boasts a collection of 7,402 books and 1,674 DVDs. She lists Edith Wharton, along with Tolstoy, Trollope and Edna St. Her knowledge of William Faulkner’s work is clearly voluminous. Librarian Anne Wilkes is seated in a comfortable chair talking about her favorite authors. An elderly patron is on the library’s public computer, checking his email. ![]() Nearby, a box of donated books waits to be sorted. Sparkling spring sunshine pours through the windows of the beautifully appointed Sue Fisher Moren Memorial Reading Room in the Orr’s Island Library.
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