Scarborough Public Library is excited to announce a collaborative project between the Library, Maine Audubon, Friends of Scarborough Marsh, and Scarborough Land Trust.

The goal of the project is to create an educational, virtual tour of the Nonesuch River, which starts just outside of Scarborough and meanders its way through the town before connecting with other rivers through the Scarborough Marsh and out to the Gulf of Maine.

“The Nonesuch River plays an oversized and undervalued role in shaping the Town of Scarborough,” according to a community volunteer and donor who wishes to remain anonymous. “It divides the community into distinctly independent sections, provides habitat to many animal species, and offers numerous recreational opportunities.”

The project leaders envision this as a Community Science effort, with the Library serving as the central institution helping guide the effort while providing the tools and training needed by participants to build-out the virtual tour. “We see the Public Library as being the ideal institution to coordinate this kind of effort, allowing nonprofits such as ours to participate when we don’t necessarily have the staffing, public space, or wherewithal to tackle this kind of project alone,” says Peggy Pennoyer, a Friends of Scarborough Marsh board member.

The Scarborough Public Schools are also interested in participating. “This project offers opportunities for our students to engage in authentic learning about the community, with the community and gives back to the community,” noted Monique Culbertson, Director of Curriculum and Assessment. “It is truly unique and quite exciting. I can envision all grade levels of our students engaging in a variety of ways and across multiple subject areas including and beyond the sciences.”

Funded largely through donations, the Library has created a “GoPro Adventure Pack” that project participants can borrow to record high quality 360-degree video and images of the river and its surrounding fauna. The pack also includes the accessories needed to securely attach the GoPro Max camera to bikes, canoes, cars, and paddle boards.

The Library also provides access to the cloud-based platform that hosts the virtual tour and allows for other nonprofit organizations to embed the tour (or elements of it) into their own websites, even with their own branding. The platform for the tour is called ThingLink, created by a company out of Finland, which has generously discounted the subscription costs for the professional version and even more generously allowed the Library to share the platform with other nonprofit entities in our community as part of this and perhaps future projects.

Also funded primarily through donations, the Library has installed a high-quality interactive digital display that provides interactive access to the virtual tour, as well as displays of other community art projects and library event notices.

Interested in learning more and volunteering your skills and time? You can view a prototype of the virtual tour on the digital display at the Library or on their website at https://www.scarboroughlibrary.org/nonesuchrivertour. Contact Tom Corbett at tcorbett@scarboroughlibrary.org to learn how you can participate.