Winter doldrums setting in?

Area libraries have more than page-turners to offer patrons who are looking to escape this cold and slippery season.

Get lost in the skies with a telescope from Skidompha Library on Main Street in Damariscotta. It can be checked out for two weeks, executive director Pam Gormley said.

Bring home a Picasso, a Monet or Rembrandt reproduction to hang on the wall, from Wiscasset Public Library. The Wyeths are there for the borrowing, too.

In all, Wiscasset has 85 of the framed, poster-paper versions of artwork that can be checked out, said Director Pam Dunning. They go out for four weeks and may be renewed as many as three times.

“You can change your artwork with the season. It's fun,” she said. “When it's cold in the winter, you can bring in pictures of the spring to hang in your home.”

They're kept upstairs in the welcoming setting of the Hortense and Henry Ferne II Memorial Art Room, which also has 2,500 books, Dunning said. If you get inspired, consider one of the library's how-to videos on drawing and painting.

Or get in free to an art museum. The Wiscasset and Damariscotta libraries, as well as Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library, all give out passes to the Portland Museum of Art; the Wiscasset and Boothbay Harbor libraries also have passes to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland.

The Wiscasset library buys passes to the two museums; the Boothbay Region Art Foundation sponsors the Boothbay Harbor library's passes; and the Pemaquid Group of Artists funds the ones at Skidompha.

Other than the museum passes, the library in Boothbay Harbor has little that patrons wouldn't traditionally expect from a library, its director Tim McFadden said. "It's not that we're not forward-thinking. We just haven't had the space," he said.

Space is even tighter right now, as operations have moved to the Meadow Mall while the Oak Street library gets its expansion. The added space will allow the library to look at stocking some of the non-traditional items other libraries are offering, McFadden said.

“We'll be exploring a lot more options once we get to the new space,” he said.

A recent conference McFadden attended at Colby College in Waterville has him thinking about “maker spaces,” where the public can use a number of technologies, he said.