by Nicholas Glade
The Owls Head Transportation Museum is a unique institution; therefore, it needs an archivist willing to step up to a variety of tasks and challenges. Enter Sarah Dunne! As a head Archivist, she performs a wide variety of different activities each day to keep the museum, archives, and library up and running. On any given day Sarahmight be doing any combination of the following things: cataloging, tracking down WWI memorabilia from Maine politicians, digitizing archival materials, supervising volunteers, or working with maintenance crews to keep bi-planes in working order, as well as arranging research partnerships with New Zealand and Japan. Of course, these tasks are just the tip of the iceberg of what Sarah Dunne does for the Owls Head Museum.
Since this museum is unique, Sarah has developed creative outreach programs that encompass a wide scope both thematically and geographically. A perfect example of the scope of Sarah’s outreach is a current project she is undertaking with an institution in New Zealand. This project aims to do a complete restoration of the Beech Staggerwing airplane used by Admiral Byrd for Antarctic exploration. On the library side of things Sarah is responsible for an impressive collection of manuals for vintage and antique vehicles. Since many of these manuals are rare and often relevant to vehicles in the museum’ collection, Sarah is also in charge of cataloging them and maintaining them in the museum’s library. These manuals also serve as an important outreach tool, since adding to them to the Owls Head collection involves reaching out to, or being consulted by, a variety of institutions and individuals. The upkeep needed for the vehicles means that Sarah often consults with her “gearhead” (a word used for car lovers and enthusiasts) friends and colleagues. As a result, her subject expertise goes well beyond the library field which conversely expands the museum’s scope of partnerships and collaborations considerably.
When it comes to collaborations within the museum field, Sarah has undertaken and initiated many interesting and effective projects. One of the most recent projects involved cross-promoting materials. Owls Head provided a scan of a WWI Scottish Royal Flying Corps pilot’s logbook in the museum’s collection to the RAF Museum in exchange for documents that provided more information about the pilot’s life and death. Another successful project involved an exchange with the Longfellow House in which Sarah not only provided their archivist with materials connected to a 1913 Rolls-Royce that first belonged to Alice Longfellow (daughter of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), but also, with the assistance of the museum’s Ground Vehicle Coordinator, arranged for the visiting archivist to get a ride in this very Rolls-Royce. The Longfellow House archivist generously provided Sarah with copies of correspondence between Alice Longfellow and Rolls-Royce. Sarah has also collaborated with the Owls Head Transportation Museum’s two neighboring institutions; the Knox Museum and the Farnsworth Art Museum. These collaborations are attempts to “mix the artists and the gearheads” and for the three museums to attract audiences that wouldn’t normally visit them. The most recent of these exhibits was called The Art of Disaster, and some of the Owls Head Transportation Museum’s archival material related to aviation crashes and train wrecks was displayed alongside artwork from the collection of the Farnsworth Museum and from private collectors.
Due to the small population and community feel of Owls Head, Maine. Sarah also does community outreach and programming work. The museum’s antique vehicles and airplanes often make cameo appearances at parades and events, with their vintage airplane flyovers being a crowd favorite. The museum hosts multiple events and cruise-ins, which help present their collection to a large audience. Sarah often contributes historic information and images to the promotional materials for these events. Sarah also works closely with families in the area and elsewhere that have connections to early transportation history, and has even gotten donations from the family of a former governor of Maine.
Sarah’s job involves some fundraising. This means she can sometimes be found writing grants or meeting with potential donors. She occasionally even uses Owls Head’s antique vehicles to pick up donors and guests from the airport next to the museum. Sarah also contributes to the museum’s biggest fundraising event: the annual New England Auto AuctionTM. This event features an auction of special-interest vintage and modern vehicles This event is extremely popular with car collectors in North America and beyond (some phone bidders call in from Europe), and in turn an extremely well attended and popular summer event in Maine.