FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 3, 2025

Kail Partin, Marketing Director
Portland Public Library
partin@portlib.org | 207-871-1752

PPL Joins Dirigo Libraries Consortium and Prepares for Systemwide Upgrade

The Launch of Dirigo Libraries Marks Complete Catalog Overhaul for PPL

Portland, Maine — Portland Public Library (PPL) is thrilled to announce its partnership with the Maine State Library, the Law and Legislative Reference Library, and the Bangor Public Library in forming the Dirigo Libraries consortium. Patrons of member libraries will enjoy streamlined access to materials from all four libraries, with holds automatically pulling from the combined inventory to reduce wait times. Additionally, the user interface will undergo significant improvements to enhance the overall experience. This innovative collaboration unites libraries from across the state, delivering Maine residents faster and more convenient access to a shared collection of resources, both in-person and online.

“The Dirigo Libraries consortium represents a new chapter for library services in Maine,” said Sarah Moore, Executive Director of PPL. “Through this consortium, we are not only expanding access but also strengthening connections between our communities and the wealth of knowledge and culture that the member libraries offer.”

As part of this exciting transition, PPL will upgrade its catalog system to Polaris, a cutting-edge integrated library system designed to enhance the user experience. This upgrade will streamline catalog searches, improve user account features, and offer expanded options for borrowing and accessing materials.

“The move to Polaris allows us to provide an intuitive and seamless experience for our patrons,” Moore added. “We’re looking forward to delivering a system that truly meets the needs of our modern library users.”

To implement these upgrades, PPL acknowledges there will be temporary impacts on services but has carefully planned measures to minimize disruptions and ensure patrons continue to have access to essential resources:

• Final Transfer to Polaris: Beginning Monday, February 24, the library’s current catalog system will be offline for approximately two weeks to facilitate the final data transfer to Polaris. During this period, patrons will still be able to borrow physical items from the library; however, we kindly ask that materials not be returned until the transfer is complete. Please also note that shelf records and hold records will be temporarily unavailable during this time.
• Temporary Hiatus from MaineCat: PPL will pause participation in MaineCat starting Wednesday, March 5, for approximately eleven weeks. During this period, PPL will collaborate with other local libraries to provide an alternative, manual system for interlibrary loans to ensure patrons have access to the materials they seek.

While these disruptions will pose some temporary inconveniences, the long-term benefits of the upgrade will be well worth the wait. Once the transition is complete, patrons will enjoy a more robust and user-friendly system that broadens access to resources across the four member libraries of the Dirigo Libraries consortium.

For more information about the Dirigo Libraries consortium, the catalog upgrade, and what to expect during the transition, please visit PPL’s Dirigo Libraries page.

About Portland Public Library:
Portland Public Library serves as the civic and cultural center of our region in which generations of citizens are literate, informed, and engaged. The library provides trusted resources and accessible experiences that inspire imagination, curiosity, awareness, and learning.

This week Calien Lewis, dramaturg with Opera Maine will be joining us again to discuss La Boheme.  This year, Opera Maine will be presenting La Boheme during their winter performances and Sweeney Todd for their summer performance. Both operas have a relationship with Broadway. Critics can’t seem to agree on whether or not Sweeney Todd is an opera or a musical. Sondheim states, “essentially, the difference, I think, is in the expectation of the audience. Obviously there are differences in terms of performers and how they approach singing in an art form. But primarily an opera is something done in an opera house in front of an opera audience.”

When Rent went to Broadway in 1996, this librarian was a freshman in college. As soon as someone starts saying the words “five hundred,” in my head, I immediately start singing, “525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year?” I’m fairly positive that other “theater kids” from that generation do the same.  My mother, an opera enthusiast, told me at the time that Rent was just a modernization of La Boheme. My mind was blown (apparently the song, La Vie Boheme wasn’t a clue). Wikipedia pulls the genesis of Rent from a 1996 New York Times interview with playwright Billy Aronson:

In 1988, playwright Billy Aronson wanted to create “a musical based on Puccini’s La Bohème, in which the luscious splendor of Puccini’s world would be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York.” In 1989, Jonathan Larson, a 29-year-old composer, began collaborating with Aronson on this project, and the two composed together “Santa Fe”, “Splatter” (later re-worked into the song “Rent”), and “I Should Tell You.” Larson suggested setting the play “amid poverty, homelessness, spunky gay life, drag queens and punk” in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, which happened to be down the street from his Greenwich Village apartment. He also came up with the show’s ultimate title (a decision that Aronson was unhappy with, at least until Larson pointed out that “rent” also means torn apart). In 1991, he asked Aronson if he could use Aronson’s original concept and make Rent his own. Larson had ambitious expectations for Rent; his ultimate dream was to write a rock opera “to bring musical theater to the MTV generation”. Aronson and Larson made an agreement that if the show went to Broadway, Aronson would share in the proceeds and be given credit for “original concept & additional lyrics.”

With this relationship between the two genres of theater, I wondered what other plays or musicals evolved from operas. My first thought went to Elton John’s Aida.

In the year 2000, Elton John and longtime collaborator Tim Rice watched their adaptation of Verdi’s opera hit Broadway. The musical won four Tony Awards including Best Original Score.

In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones, a musical based on George Bizet’s Carmen and starring Muriel Burrell Smith, hit Broadway.  In 1954, Hammerstein adapted the play into a film directed by Otto Preminger and starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. Some of us may even remember watching Carmen on Ice in 1990 starring Katerina Witt in the role of Carmen. We don’t get to learn if Katerina had any kind of singing voice.  Instead of searching for that on Youtube, stick with Carmen Jones.

In 1904, Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly premiered in Milan to fairly terrible reviews. Today, the opera is one of the most performed operas in the world. In 1991, Miss Saigon premiers on Broadway and now our American soldier is fighting in the Vietnam War and our geisha is now a South Vietnamese bar girl. Both the opera and the musical were criticized for orientalism and racism, the music of both have definitely become a part of Western culture.

We do hope you will join us this Wednesday, to learn more about the opera of La Boheme and maybe satisfy some curiosities about the “original” Rent.

Be sure to check back here this summer when I explore the question of “Why do humans taste so good?”