The Presque Isle Public Library has old Presque Isle newspapers on microfilm. Over the years, people have requested information on the obituaries published in those papers. A spreadsheet was developed showing the a person’s name, birthdate, deathdate, and the location in the microfilm library to better enable staff to retrieve material. Several years ago, this data was placed in a searchable format on-line containing over 25,000 entries.
In the last couple of years, the UMPI library donated its obituary collection to the PIPL. This collection consisted of obituaries cut out of the newspapers of Aroostook County and glued into scrapbooks. The PIPL has scanned all of these and is beginning the process of entering them into a database. With over 102,000 entries, this will take time, but will greatly enhance the overall collection.