The Folklife Center at the University of Maine recently made some of its books more widely available, both at Maine’s public libraries and on the World Wide Web.

The center donated seven books, including “Anna May,” “I’m a Man that Works,” “Dell Turner” and “Wilbur Day” to all of the state’s public libraries. According to Pauleena MacDougall, associate director of the Folklife Center, the idea to make the books available at libraries was that of director emeritus Sandy Ives.

“We have a fairly large back list of books and while they sell on a regular basis, Sandy thought it seemed kind of silly to keep them in the basement when people could be reading them,” says MacDougall. “We thought this would be a nice opportunity to get these books out to the public.”

In addition, she says, this allows smaller libraries to own many of the books they have not previously been able to afford.

Also, this summer, the center has made a previously out-of-print book available to the public on its Web site. “Maliseet and Passamaquoddy Tales,” first published in 1964, can be viewed at http://www.umaine.edu/folklife.

“We’ve had some call for it, and because the cost of reprinting is so high we asked why not put it on the Web and see if that’s a way people can enjoy it,” says MacDougall, who may also use the book for one of her classes next semester.