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V O L . X X X I N O. X I X 28 Fact Book / Doing Business in Maine P H OTO E S S AY BOOKENDS: One of the educational design elements at the Camden Public Library is a children's garden where reading is, literally, the foundation of all knowledge. Here, Kristy Kilfoyle, the library's executive director, peruses a modern work of short fiction while seated on a bench supported by granite-hewn versions of Pine Tree State faves such as "One Morning in Maine" by Robert McCloskey. Libraries are also repositories of local history, with everything from yellowed newspaper clippings and tax assessor's maps to searchable genealogical archives. A highlight of Camden's collection is a diorama of the town's harbor circa 1920. (At upper right is the Megunticook River waterfall, fortified by a 200-year-old dam which town residents voted to remove in a June referendum.) KITTEN KA-BOOK-LE: Meet Otis, a 10-year-old charcoal gray temporary inhabitant of the Kennebunk Free Library. In an adoption program in collaboration with the local Animal Welfare Society, Otis and best pal Levi — and many more felines — have bunked amidst Kennebunk's books before finding their forever home. Mostly, libraries serve two-legged patrons. All have busy programs for young children and teens, with activities and decorations changing with the seasons — as with the spidery Halloween motifs gracing the workstation of Emmaline Arena-Bruce, a tech educator and teen programming librarian in Kennebunk. MONEY FROM AWAY: It's a mistake to whiz past the Ogunquit Memorial Library, catering to locals and tourists alike since 1898. Also in the Romanesque mode, the petit castle owes its existence to Ogunquit's status as a magnet for seasonal visitors. Two regulars in late 19th-century summers, lawyer George and his wife Nannie Conarroe from Philadelphia, were so enamored of the coastal enclave that, after George died, Nannie donated family money to build the library and 1,500 family books to stock it. As if that weren't sufficiently charitable, Nannie set up a family trust fund that provides income for the library to this day.