Maine Tourism Association is excited to announce that the Maine State Library is in the process of collecting and digitizing all historic brochures, advertising or film produced by the State of Maine or the Maine Publicity Bureau to promote Maine tourism, including the 90-plus years of Maine Invites You.
After MTA reached out to the library to find past copies of Maine Invites You, the library not only agreed to digitize what they had in their collection but are seeking to acquire or borrow as many additional materials for this collection as they can. This large-scale digitization project will make the collection available to the public online.
MTA will then be able to draw from historic articles, photos and advertisements for our website and printed materials, including the State of Maine Bicentennial edition of Maine Invites You in 2020 and the 100th Anniversary of the Maine Tourism Association edition in 2021.
For nearly 100 years, Maine officials and representatives from the tourism industry have worked together to promote the state as a first-class travel destination. Early efforts began in the 1920s when the Maine Development Commission of state government partnered with the newly-formed trade group, Maine Publicity Bureau, to advertise to out of state visitors and field inquiries from the growing “motor tourism” sector of the travel market. (As you know, the Maine Publicity Bureau became the Maine Tourism Association.)
The Maine State Library has made an effort to collect copies of materials created by the groups but its collection is far from complete. Many of the older materials that were held in reserve at the Department of Economic and Community Development were lost when a section of their storage was damaged by flooding years ago.
Anyone who has copies of tourism publications from the Maine Publicity Bureau or the State of Maine that they would be willing to donate or loan to the library for digitization should email Jennifer.Munson@maine.gov or call 207-287-5620.
A portion of the library’s collection has been digitized and is available to view online in the DigitalMaine repository at https://library.digitalmaine.org. Library staff will be working throughout the summer on the project with the goal of having the entire collection online in 2019.
Great thanks goes to James Ritter, State Librarian, and Adam Fisher, Director of Collections, Digital Initiatives and Promotion, for all of the time and resources they are dedicating to this amazing project.