Maine State Archives offers expanded digital access with Open Access

AUGUSTA — Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced the official launch of Open Access, the Maine State Archives new online platform for publicly accessible, digitized and born-digital public records. The platform can be accessed at https://digitalarchives.maine.gov or from the Maine State Archives section of the Secretary of State website.

Open Access is the public-facing side of a strategic effort to maintain a digital preservation system for records of Maine state government. The system ensures the long-term preservation and accessibility of state records that are archival or subject to long-term retention.

“From the beginning, I have been committed to improving efficiency and modernizing our systems to benefit Mainers and streamline access,” Bellows said. “Open Access will provide improved government transparency in a user-friendly platform that will be continuously expanded as more and more collections are imaged.”

Overall, MSA’s collections span five centuries from the 1639 royal land grant to Sir Ferdinand Gorges to the 2024 papers of the Lewiston Tragedy Commission. One section of the site is devoted to Maine history before statehood, highlighting important records such as Revolutionary War land grants and the Rolls and Rosters Book of Orders for the 8th Division of the Maine Militia. The records of Maine’s involvement in the Civil War are extensive. Open Access currently holds just over 100,000 imaged records so far.

“With more than 8 miles of documents in the Archives care, there is a long way to go to digitize them all, but it’s a great start,” Maine State Archivist Christian Cotz said. “We’re excited to continue to add records to the platform and provide Mainers from students to researchers with even more to discover each time they visit the site.”