Serendipitous timing and a simple request have combined to keep a large collection of nautical publications in Brooklin, preserving the library’s local roots.
Last June, Jon Wilson gave visitors a tour of the WoodenBoat Library—a 6,700-volume “labor of love” he put together over decades of book and periodical collecting. Wilson is the founder of WoodenBoat magazine and the WoodenBoat School, located in Brooklin. He sold the business to two staff members in 2022.
“Once I transferred the company to the employees, I closed the library to public access,” Wilson said. “I couldn’t keep it going. I didn’t want it to be in private hands anymore.”
“The concentration of this library is unique, it is one of a kind,” Wilson said, describing its focus as “the most intricate aspects of boat and yacht building.”
It was important to Wilson that the collection be preserved while also being available to scholars, boatbuilders, researchers, students, and anyone else interested in reading about boats.
“It will be a research library, open to the public under supervision, not a lending library,” he noted.
When the town of Brooklin’s Friend Memorial Library (FML) expansion is completed in the next few years, Wilson’s collection will have a dedicated space in the annex there, to be named the Anne and Maynard Bray Maritime Research Center. Anne Bray was WoodenBoat librarian, and, Wilson said, “she gave the library the structure it has.” Her husband, Maynard Bray, is a writer, boatbuilder, editor, nautical historian, and local celebrity.
The Research Center will also include an archive of over 155,000 slide images donated by marine photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz.
“The photo donation brings another whole cohort of aficionados,” Wilson said. “The breadth of interest in this stuff is so wide.”
Wilson could have donated his books to a larger institution, such as Maine Maritime Academy or Penobscot Marine Museum. But, he said, “They didn’t ask,” and Friend Memorial Library did.
Robert Baird, FML’s capital campaign chair, explained, “The [Friend Memorial] library was already planned to expand, and then word got to the board that the collection might be available. The thing that’s really fun is that connection to Brooklin. It’s a fabulous place to live and the library is just the heart of the community.”
Jill Knowles, a volunteer on FML’s fundraising and capital campaign committees, said, “Jon could have sent it anywhere.”
But in its future home at FML, “it will be accessible to the public. A lot of university or museum libraries are not usually accessible.”
The request to Wilson “made so much sense to him,” Knowles said, given the community’s boatbuilding heritage. That heritage remains current, with wooden boatbuilding taught in the local elementary school.
Knowles, who was the Brooklin school librarian for more than 30 years, remembered that 20-plus years ago, when her own child was in school, “they used Brooklin lumber to make small boats that kids actually built” and then took out on the water.
The FML expansion is still in its planning stage, Knowles said, but things are moving ahead.
“We don’t have final plans yet. We haven’t really started the final phase of fundraising. We’re getting ready to do something this year. We are at a place where we feel comfortable finalizing the design process,” she said.
Stewardship of FML’s own collection and that of the Maritime Research Center is a high priority, which is reflected in the fundraising goals.
“What was planned from the get-go was to have an endowment, to build the endowment of the library and to keep the library going,” Knowles said. They have raised approximately $2 million, which is $500,000 short of the original goal of $2.5 million for the whole campaign, but they plan to keep fundraising to $3 million due to rising building costs.
The board is also mindful of staffing needs related to the expansion.
“The most recent hire at the library has experience in the archival stuff,” Knowles said.
Of the local passion for building and studying wooden boats, Knowles said, “It’s a niche world, or course. But it’s real.”
