The Sewall Company Aerial Photographs Collection at UMaine Special Collections (Virtual Lunch and Learn)

Video available on YouTube

Speaker: Paul Smitherman, University of Maine Fogler Library

In October of 2019, Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine received a donation of over 3,000 rolls of film containing about 1 million aerial images from the James W. Sewall Co. in Old Town, Maine. The collection contains original aerial photography of Maine and New England captured by Sewall over the span of 65 years. The archive will offer researchers and the public a vast collection that details changes to Maine’s landscapes and cities over the decades. This talk will provide a brief overview of the collection and its history, and the current status of efforts to digitize the photographs and make them available. A survey will be provided to offer attendees an opportunity for suggestions about potential uses for the images.

Paul Smitherman is a Library Specialist at Fogler Library where he is a technical adviser in the Special Collections Department, developing solutions to the challenges that archives face in the digital world.

The current online Sewall Collection may be found at:

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/sewell_aerial/