Chester Library Delivers All Elected Officials at One Site
Chester Library now offers the only location for the complete list of Chester Borough and Township elected officials. Previously, information seekers paged through old record books at the Borough and Township offices or individual PDFs of council minutes on their web sites, or visited the Library to access Observer-Tribune newspapers from 1936 forward. The online list, accessible here: https://localhistory.chesterlib.org/chester-borough-and-township-elected-officials/, extends back to 1870, the earliest records of Chester Township’s elected officials available. The new elected officials list will be useful to students, teachers, genealogical researchers, political scientists, and other researchers.
The Library’s Chester Borough and Township Elected Officials web page is easily searchable by using the Find search option in a user’s browser menu. One also can use the Control/Command + F key combination to launch the Find option in a browser. The page will be updated with future election results as they become available. “This is an invaluable resource for the residents of Chester. It’s become much more convenient for this community to consult Chester’s election information by using this tool on the Library’s web site,” said Library Director Lesley Karczewski.
Until now, a compiled list of all Chester’s elected officials was nonexistent. Local History Department volunteer Marty Groff obtained the information by first searching the Observer-Tribune newspapers at the Chester Library. However the newspaper only dates to 1936; and the Library is missing the years between 1939 and 1954. Next, Groff visited both the Borough and Township offices over a period of months to comb through Council meeting minutes books spanning 144 years. After she compiled her lists from each locality, she gave them to Local History Librarian Debra Schiff, who created the web page and made the information available and accessible to users.
The Local History Department of the Chester Library in Chester, New Jersey is a resource for reference and original materials that document Chester, Morris County, and N.J. history. The purpose of the Local History Department is to collect, preserve, describe, and make accessible these materials to the local community, as well as to visiting and online researchers.
The Chester Library serves the residents of Chester Borough and Chester Township, New Jersey. The library houses a collection of over 70,000 books, DVDs, CDs, video games, audio books and e-books. In addition, it offers a wide array of adult, teen and children’s programs, public computers, online research services and community meeting rooms.
