Our Website is #1. Award Announced

The Plainfield Public Library walked off with top honors for "Best Website" at the recent conference of the New Jersey Library Association in Long Branch. The website you are on has been in development for two years. It focuses on the library's vast resources on Plainfield history, including photographs, postcards, and blueprints. The key to the website's success has been making these materials accessible by web search. Researchers from 34 states and 11 countries have contacted the Plainfield Public Library for historical information.

Images of 3,000 photographs and 1,000 postcards show Plainfield's past as far back as the 1870's. More images are constantly added to the website. Homeowners in Plainfield search the blueprint database for drawings of their homes and search the photographs to study architectural details of other homes of the same period as theirs.

Other popular aspects of the site include a calendar of events of children's and adult programs, and a page of writings by immigrants who are learning to read and write English and write movingly of their home countries.

Our two newest features are an illustrated history of public and private education in Plainfield, and highlights of the library's impressive art collection showing 24 paintings.