West Paris hopes to click with online shoppers

STORY TIME — Grace Makley, daughter of West Paris librarian Patricia Makley,
reads to students in Cindy Mullen’s first-grade class, January 9, in the basement
of the Arthur L. Mann Memorial Library, Main Street, in West Paris.  Now an art
design major at Northern Michigan University, Grace also had Mullen as a teacher
when she was in the first grade at the Legion Memorial School.  (photo by Duke Harrington)

HELPING HAND — Rodney Abbott, trustee
chairman of the Arthur L. Mann Memorial
Library, in West Paris, accepts certification
of the library’s internet shopping portal with
OurGVRewards, January 9, from company
representative Tom Fitzgerald.  The library
will get 6 percent of the sales through any one
of 1,500 online retailers when shoppers begin
at www.ourgvmall.com/wppl. 

WEST PARIS — Now that the Arthur L. Mann Memorial Library, on Main Street in West Paris, is two-thirds of the way to its fundraising goal for a $361,000 renovation project, it hopes to raise the rest by clicking with online shoppers.

Library trustees have partnered with OurGVRewards, a company dedicated to pairing online retailers with non-profits, to the benefit of both.  According to company representative Tom Fitzgerald, a West Paris resident, the library will get 6 percent of the sales through any one of 1,500 online retailers when shoppers begin at www.ourgvmall.com/wppl. 

“The founders of OurGVRewards — the GV stands for global vision — wanted to created a company that would be able to give $1 billion to non-profits by 2034,” says Fitzgerald.  “I’m trying to bring this concept into Maine because, let’s face it, we need the money.”

After starting at the www.ourgvmall.com/wppl website, online shoppers simply follow the links to search for a particular product, or ones leading to a favorite online retailer.  Once at a retailer website, such as WalMart, Barnes & Noble, eBay or Dell, shoppers proceed as they normally would to purchase products online. 

“You don’t do a thing other than what you would ordinarily do, other than to start at our site,” explains Rodney Abbott, chairman of the library’s board of trustees.

“I did almost all of my Christmas shopping though the site and it worked very easily,” says Pricilla Pulsifer, one of many “friends of the library.”

Other retailers involved in the OurGVmall program include JC Penny’s, Office Depot, K-Mart and DisneyShopping.com.

According to Fitzgerald, the library gets its share of each sale, in quarterly installments, while retailers benefit from increased web traffic to their internet portals.

“It lowers their cost because they don’t have to advertise to attract those shoppers,” said Fitzgerald.  “It’s our job to get that person in on behalf of the library.  Really, everybody wins in this scenario.  That’s what I like about the company and it’s why I signed on with them.”

“Now we just need to let people know about this opportunity,” says Abbott, “because, if they don’t know about it, this won’t work.”

Built in 1926 using money and land left by local mill owner Lewis M. Mann to honor his son, who died young, the West Paris library is well-known for its castle-like architecture.  Made of fieldstone from local pastures, the building earned a berth on the Register of Historic Places in 1989.

However, the town has long since outgrown the tiny space.  Much of the library’s collection is stored in the cellar, where it is inaccessible to the handicapped.  The planned $361,000 addition — cut from an earlier $450,000 proposal — was designed by Portland architect Richard Reed. 

Carefully crafted to compliment the original design, the addition will double the building’s usable floor space, allowing the library to offer a wider array of programs and services, including the creation of a new children’s space.

Groundbreaking is tentatively set for July 1.

So far, library trustees have secured a $50,000 grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, to go toward the expansion project, along with $15,000 from the Falmouth-based Davis Family Foundation and $500 from the KeyBank National Association and the Wing-Benjamin Trust.

The rest of the funds raised so far have come from various trust funds set up over the years, in addition to a variety of local donations and fundraising events.  

“When we started out with this project and they told us how much money we needed, I looked out at this little town and thought, ‘Oh, my Lord,” recalls Abbott.  “But it’s worked out very well.  The citizens of West Paris have really come through, use of the library is way up, and we’re hoping we can count on them once more, to help make this expansion a reality.”