Design of Town Reports

The State Library has a lot of very cool headlining collections but this post is written to support the more mundane. Earlier this spring we posted some well written blog posts by our Government Documents Librarian about M.G.L. ch.6 §39B. This law mandates that all state agencies submit copies of their published materials to the library. But what do those published materials look like? Luckily for you, I, an intern here at the State Library, conducted a thorough inventory of the annual reports of every town. These reports, held in the town room in the library stacks, often span from the 1800s to the current year. (Per law, we’re supposed to have physical copies of every report from every town from every year.)

For the most part, towns send in their annual reports with little to minimal prompting. What happens to these reports once they’re in the town room? They get inventoried by enterprising young interns like myself. The reports don’t move unless someone wants to look at them and there isn’t a digital version available in our online digital collection. Is this a sad fate for the annual reports that end up here? It doesn’t have to be, especially when you are surprised by an interesting and thoughtful report design. When I was working through the ‘S’ section I came across a period in the 1970s when someone with a passion for graphic design made the Springfield Public Health Department annual reports. Some of my favorite include:

Left: Springfield Health Department 91st Annual Report 1972.
Right: 1978 Springfield Health Department 97th Annual Report. If the smaller circles are difficult to read: From 12 O’Clock and going clockwise: “Child Hygiene,” “Tuberculosis Division,” “Communicable Disease Control,” “Environmental Sanitation,” “Immunization,” “Dental Clinic,” “Health Education,” “Food & Milk Division”

Left: Part 1 of the cover for my favorite issue. Open to reveal... 

Right: Part 2 of my favorite cover. Not what I was expecting! Reads: ‘LOOK’ 86th Annual Report Springfield Health Department 1967

Nowhere, in any of these reports, could I find an indication of who designed the cover. But they’re admirable – unique, colorful, thoughtful, and even funny at times. The designs stand out in a room that is literally full of reports just like them.

Other town report designs include drawings by children (some of which are indicated to have won a town design contest), photographs and engravings of key aspects of towns (gates, buildings, natural landmarks), images of community in the town, and even images of standout town members in memoriam.

Nahant Annual Report for the Year Ending
December 31, 2012. Below the image:
A true Nahanter Robert F. Cormier | 1928-2012

The challenge all of these town reports face is how to be memorable in a room full of reports just like it. And the truth is that these reports can’t be memorable, not just by the cover. As fun as I find the covers to be, the best way for a report to make a lasting impact is for it to be seen by people who aren’t library staff. Researchers come in to the library to study town reports for a variety of reasons (academic, legal, personal interest) - we had a researcher come in regularly over the past year to study town reports in an effort to gather data about municipalities and working women. You can find out a lot about your town (or other towns) in these town reports: how many people registered for a dog license, how your public schools are doing, what services were accomplished with your tax dollars. Civic literacy extends from the highest levels of the federal government to the most local levels of the state government, and unlike the federal government, these documents have more unique cover art.

There is a saying that is widely hated, at least from my observations as a student in library and archives school, that something was “found” in the archives. You can generally be sure that if something is in a library or archive then that item is not lost. It has been documented, it and its location is in the official record, and it is kept in a safe environment. It may be lost to your memory, and maybe you never even knew it existed, but it is not lost to us. If these reports are lost to you, though, you can rediscover them in our reading room or from the comfort of wherever you are with our online repository. Go forth and discover!

Emily Buff

Government Documents Intern