The building of the Bendable Maine content catalog is now fully underway.

As the Maine State Library gets ready to launch the lifelong learning system in August, we are busy inputting into our digital database descriptions of— and direct links to—thousands of courses and other activities that will allow Mainers to acquire new knowledge and skills.

You can think of the content catalog like a good bouillabaisse (prepared the Maine way, of course) with its rich mix of ingredients.

In our case, we are making sure to blend different modes of learning (readings, videos and live instruction), time horizons (lessons that take just minutes, along with classes that play out over weeks or months) and topic areas (learning to advance your career, improve your everyday life or just have fun).

Mainers, like this participant at a stakeholder session in Lewiston, have helped to shape our content catalog.

Our lineup of online content providers—Cell-Ed, Study.com, Penn Foster, edX, LRNG, Khan Academy, GCFGlobal and more—will offer something for everyone: younger learners and adults, those who’ve had a lot of formal education and those seeking foundational skills, people who are comfortable on a computer and those who are less digitally confident.

And alongside all of these national resources will be a huge amount of local learning content suggested by Mainers. Think maker spaces; professional development opportunities from the University of Maine; classes on art, music and cooking; adult ed programs; and much, much more.

As big a stew as it is, one key ingredient runs throughout: Come late summer, all of this learning will be just a couple of clicks away.