BLUE HILL – Though it may be worth a thousand words, a picture also can strike the right note when it accompanies music.

Before there were album covers and album cover art, there was sheet music, the printed music for popular parlor songs that dates back more than a century. And there was sheet music art.

The covers of the sheet music are often topical, reflecting the theme of the music within, and can be beautiful, artistic works that also paint a picture of the times. Over the past 25 years, the Bagaduce Music Lending Library has amassed a collection of more that 200,000 individual titles of music and has become an archive for more than 20,000 pieces of popular vocal and piano music, including covers.

From that collection, the library has created a series of the matted covers focusing on different topics that have been displayed at the library and in town. The display on “Women,” for example, features covers from 1860 through 2000, and the images of the women on those covers change through the decades from Victorian ladies, to flappers and boogie-woogie girls, and eventually a photograph of Barbra Streisand.

“The covers are a reflection of the times and of our cultural attitudes,” said Susan Theriot, the library’s executive director. “It is a reflection of how music represents contemporary society – the good and the bad.”

That’s especially true, she said, of a collection of covers from the 19th and early 20th century now on display at Blue Hill Public Library. Originally developed for Black History Month, the collection includes the music of minstrel shows that, although extremely popular at the time, promoted negative racial stereotypes of African-Americans.

“It was part of the culture at the time,” Theriot said. “These songs were written by white people and performed by white people [often in black-face makeup]. That was what African-Americans had to deal with at that time.”

Another display, with a St. Patrick’s Day theme, has since been hung at the library.

Much of the collection, however, is lighter fare, and the library has cataloged the covers in categories such as animals, football, the sea and the “nifty-fifty,” a collection of songs that contain a reference to one of the 50 states.

The covers are part of BMLL’s wider collection, which the library has accumulated over the past quarter of a century after a humble beginning in an old garage at the home of one of its founders, Mary Cheyney Gould.

The library had its beginning, Gould said, when she and co-founders Marcia Chapman and Fritz Jahoda were talking one day. Jahoda, who was in his 70s, was concerned about what would happen to his collection of music. He had thought about donating it to a university, but many colleges restrict the use of such collections to faculty and students, she said.

“He didn’t want to see it thrown out, and he still wanted to continue to use it,” Gould said. “So Marcia said, ‘You need a library.'”

Volunteers, many from the Bagaduce Chorale, helped with a garage-raising at Gould’s home and, when her car and other items were moved to the new garage, the old one was converted to a library building. And the Bagaduce Music Lending Library was born.

It has been 25 years, but, Gould notes with a smile, the library hasn’t received Jahoda’s collection yet.

“He’s still using it,” she said. “He’s 98 and he’s still playing. He’s not going to give it to us until he’s through with it.”

The BMLL collection now contains more than 200,000 individual titles, and, because it has multiple copies of some titles, the library has more than 1 million individual pieces of music. It has received donations from 2,095 donors in the past 25 years, some as small as a plastic bag full, others in shipments as big as 30 large boxes or more.

“People give it to us because they want to see it have another life,” Gould said.

The library is one of the few music lending libraries in the world, and the staff ships music almost daily to borrowers in cities all over America and in 22 countries. Borrowers phone in or order through the library Web site that uses a unique and copyrighted system to allow viewers to browse the collection using a variety of keyword options.

Before the music can be borrowed, a cadre of volunteers processes each piece that comes to the library. New pieces have to be cataloged, entered into the computer system – including an entry for each individual piece contained in an anthology or collection – repaired and placed on the shelves. All that is done by the volunteers, who number 15 to 20 in winter and about double that in summer.

According to Theriot, the volunteers put in about 9,000 hours at the library last year.

The library also is the repository for the Maine State Library’s State of Maine Music Collection, which has bolstered its own Maine music collection.

“The collection holds music that has any connection to Maine – the composer lived here, wrote here, died here, even if they were buried here,” Gould said.

There is music from composers such as Frank Churchill from Rumford, who wrote the music for Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and other Disney shows, and Effie Cannon of Rockland who wrote “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” There is a long list of piano and vocal pieces that refer to Maine places in the title, such as, “Pentagoet Waltz,” “Kennebec March,” “Down in Maine” and “Castine Two Step.”

By collecting and preserving sheet music, the library has become more than a lending library, Theriot said.

“It highlights our importance as an archive and as a repository,” she said. “While there are certain choral pieces that can be easily downloaded today, much of what we have, you can’t get anywhere else – or it is very expensive. Most of what we have just isn’t available.”

The library has kept its charges low in order to continue to keep its music available to musicians, and that mission won’t change as BMLL enters its second 25 years, Theriot said. The library’s directors are beginning to plan for the future, including an upgrade to its information technology.

“We’re moving forward with that,” Theriot said. “Once that is upgraded, it will improve our search capabilities and the operations on the Web.”

Theriot, who was hired six months ago and whose background is in marketing, hopes to make the library better known in the community and around the country. She said she would like to target younger musicians in order to get them using the library early in their careers.

“One of the things we hear all the time is ‘I wish I’d known about this sooner,'” Theriot said.

She also is looking for ways to improve the library’s financial footing. While lending music provides a steady income, the fees don’t cover operating costs. Over the years, the library has developed a loyal base of supporters, developed an endowment and drawn on grants.

But like many nonprofit organizations, the library feels financial pressures and needs to find ways to supplement its income.

“We need to look at ways to solidify the library’s base,” she said.

One way to do that may rest with the collection of sheet music art.

The library already has developed a series of blank note cards that feature the artwork from some of the covers from the sheet music and Theriot said they are working on an idea where people could use the Web site to customize note cards of their own.

“People would use a key word to pull up an image and customize a line of cards for themselves,” she said.

That could be expanded to include adding the images to other items such as tote bags. Each item will include the words “Bagaduce Music Lending Library,” thus increasing the marketing potential for the library, according to Theriot.

The plan depends on the IT system upgrade and improvements to the Web site, so it is still in the formative stages.

“This will take awhile; we’ve got a ways to go to upgrade the system and the Web site,” she said. “But for the Christmas season, we should be ready for some aspects of this.”

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

667-9394