The Rockland Public Library and the Rockland Historical Society present Steve Merriam, Thursday, May 18, at 6:30 p.m. This event is free and open to all.

The Rockland Historical Society (RHS), in coordination with the Rockland Public Library, is launching the Rockland Living History Project (RLHP), a new community participation program to collect, record, publish, and archive interesting stories about Rockland. RLHP Coordinator Steve Merriam and RHS volunteers will discuss the project’s mission, process, and storytelling criteria.

The project’s primary goal is to preserve Rockland’s oral history as spoken by city residents. Because people are often more comfortable talking to friends, a person who knows or suggests a storyteller-participant to RLHP will interview them for no longer than 15 minutes. The RLHP Coordinator and RHS volunteers will explain the oral history process, train the interviewers and help them develop a list of prompts or questions, and facilitate recording the interviews in the new RLHP studio. Each recorded story will also feature video of the participant and/or images taken from the RHS photo archives or the participant’s collection. They will then edit, obtain final approval, and post the video to a dedicated page on the RHS website, as well as send it to the Maine State Archive.

Come learn about this new and exciting local history project!

This event will take place in the library’s Community Room and will be livestreamed via Zoom; the Rockland Public Library is located at 80 Union Street. For more information, please email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov by 4 p.m. on May 18.