Town Report Season: 2025

It’s that time of year again! Across the Commonwealth towns are preparing their yearly town reports and sending copies to the State Library, per M.G.L. chapter 40, sections 49 and 50. Although we receive town reports throughout the year, there’s always an uptick towards the end of the fiscal year.

2024 Town Reports from the towns of Waren, Cohasset, Belchertown, Winchendon, and Wrentham

The State Library collects both physical and digital copies of these reports. The physical copies get shelved in a special room in the stacks which we refer to as the “Town Report Room.” This room contains centuries of Massachusetts town history – I’ve included some photos of our older volumes for you to enjoy – I’m only now noticing that I need to fix the shelving for Marlborough . . . oops! Anyway, ignoring that for right now, all the digital versions we have of these reports get uploaded to our Digital Collections Repository.

Town Reports from the town of Marlborough, dates 1897-1908

Left: Town Reports from the town of Malden, dates 1898-1902

Right: Town Reports from the town of Hyde Park, dates 1869-1911

You can read more about the Town Reports at the State Library by reading our past blog posts:

• Collections Highlight and New Acquisitions: Town Reports!
• Design of Town Reports
• Massachusetts City and Town reports: Paper and Electronic

Visit our Massachusetts State and Local Resources in the State Library page to learn more about State Documents Collection!

Thank you to all the Town Clerk’s Offices who have sent their 2024 reports to us!

Update: After scurrying back to the Town Report Room to reorient the Marlborough Town Reports and curse whoever shelved them that way (probably me), I realized that the volumes are actually right side up and the titles along the spines were printed the other way. Some librarian of yester-year, probably opting for a more consistent and aesthetically pleasing look, placed the call numbers accordingly!


Maryellen Larkin, Government Documents Librarian