BANGOR – Imagine having a million-dollar resource at your fingertips, but not knowing how to use it. A treasure-trove of information – organized, professional, reliable and free – is yours for the taking, but few Mainers are taking advantage of the public resource.

Two area librarians want to change all that, and they’re going on the air to get the word out. “This is really an amazing resource,” said Bangor Public Library Director Barbara McDade, “but not enough people know about it.”

Together with Old Town librarian Valerie Osborne, McDade is creating a videotape that provides step-by-step instructions for accessing the cache of subscription databases that’s as close as the nearest computer keyboard.

Courtesy of the University of Maine, the Maine State Library and the technical college system, anybody with access to the Internet can research an immense body of information without having to sift through piles of irrelevant or unreliable material.

Whether you’re looking up a prescription medication, researching changing attitudes toward homelessness, trying to line up your next fiction potboiler or helping your middle schooler write a paper on Mark Twain, you can find the specific information you need without leaving the comfort of your computer terminal.

More than 40 separate subscription databases are available, including scholarly resources – such as ERIC – the Educational Resource Information Center, Twayne’s Author series and the Oxford English Dictionary – as well as more pedestrian references such as Lit Finder and the Encyclopedia Britannica. There are separate resources for children, too.

Over $1 million in public money annually goes to providing these databases; McDade said too few Mainers, especially older adults, are getting their money’s worth.

“We get a lot of calls from people who don’t know they can access this information from home,” she said. “People need to know they can use these library resources from their living rooms.”

Many libraries, including the Maine State Library, provide direct links to the resource from their Web sites, but navigating the individual databases can be confusing for the uninitiated.

The instructional videotape McDade and Osborne are collaborating on will run on local public access stations and be available through public libraries across the state. McDade said she hopes it will be finished and available by the middle of January.