Library Staff and Board

Get to Know

The Library Staff & Board

Our dedicated staff and board are here to serve you! Get to know them a bit better so you’ll be able to greet them personally when you visit the library.

Library Staff

Savannah Gilbert

Library Director

Savannah's Book Recommendations

Eryn Tolley

Technical Services

Eryn's Book Recommendations

Joyce Morris

Overdue Specialist

Joyce's Book Recommendations

Paige Jordan

Cataloguer

Paige's Book Recommendations

Emma Brown

Library Clerk

Annalyn Carter

Library Clerk

Janice Haithcoat

Library Clerk

Our Board Members

The members of our board help us make decisions that affect the citizens of Chester County.

Melinda Carroll, Chairman

Dr. Larry Bloomingburg, Vice Chairman

Jean Smith, Secretary/Treasurer

Dr. Sara Knoell

Rosemary McKnight

Darrell Bird

Harvette Croom

Mike Alexander, County Commission Representative

Donna Butler, City Representative

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Service Expansion

New programs, resource collection development, additional populations, etc.

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Library Policies

Checkout guidelines, library expansions, grants, library access, etc.

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Library Events

Ideas, statistics of past events, how the library is being utilized, etc.

Attend a Board Meeting

The Chester County Library Board meets every other month on the third Thursday of that month at 5:00 pm at the library. Meetings are open for public attendance. The kinds of topics we discuss are displayed to the left. If you feel that you need to be added to the agenda, please contact the library director at 731-989-4673 or library@chestercountylibrary.net.

See the Calendar

Our Next Board Meeting is Scheduled For:

Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 5:00 pm
Location: Chester County Public Library

Past Board Meeting Minutes

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October 28, 2021 Minutes

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Sept 16, 2021 Minutes

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July 15, 2021 Minutes

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May 20, 2021 Minutes

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March 18, 2021 Minutes

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November 19, 2020 Minutes

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September 24, 2020 Minutes

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July 16, 2020 Minutes

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May 27, 2020 Minutes

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January 16, 2020 Minutes

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October 24, 2019 Minutes

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July 17, 2019 Minutes

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July 2, 2019 Minutes

Past Board Meeting Agendas

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November 2021 Agenda

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October 2021 Agenda

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September 2021 Agenda

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July 2021 Agenda

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May 2021 Agenda

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March 2021 Agenda

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July 2020 Agenda

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May 2020 Agenda

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January 2020 Agenda

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October 2019 Agenda

County Commission Reports

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November 2021 County Update

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September 2021 County Update

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July 2021 County Update

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May 2021 County Update

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March 2021 County Update

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November 2020 County Update

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September 2020 County Update

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January 2020 County Update

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November 2019 County Update

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September 2019 County Update

Savannah's Book Recommendations

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

I loved this book! The author takes readers on a journey using your senses. As I read, the smells she described were jumping off the pages and reminding me of smells from my own memories. Overall, I would say the book is about finding and staying true to yourself and I loved the feeling that was evoked while reading this book. Bauermeister will take you on a journey as she goes from only living on an island with her father and his jars of scents to going to a city for the first time, falling in love, running away, and meeting her mother for the first time!

Eryn's Book Recommendations

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.

Joyce's Book Recommendations

Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer

With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.

As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.

Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

This book is such a fun read that holds plenty of surprises. Without giving too much away, the main character - Oona - leaps to a different year of her life on the strike of midnight each New Year's Eve. While her physical appearance, and the date on the calendar, is constantly changing, Oona must figure out how to navigate a life that's simultaneously disruptive, unpredictable, and exciting. I especially loved the cast of characters that slip in and out of Oona's life, and the references to different decades allowed me to indulge in a fair share of nostalgia.

Filled with both comedic and heartbreaking moments, and perhaps the most original plot I've encountered in a while, this is a book you won't want to put down.

Paige's Book Recommendations

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.

The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.

But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.

When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship.

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.

Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.
Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son's irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.

Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper - in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Book Cover

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

The Library Staff & Board

Library Staff

Savannah Gilbert

Eryn Tolley

Joyce Morris

Paige Jordan

Emma Brown

Annalyn Carter

Janice Haithcoat

Our Board Members

Melinda Carroll, Chairman

Dr. Larry Bloomingburg, Vice Chairman

Jean Smith, Secretary/Treasurer

Dr. Sara Knoell

Rosemary McKnight

Darrell Bird

Harvette Croom

Mike Alexander, County Commission Representative

Donna Butler, City Representative

Service Expansion

Library Policies

Library Events

Attend a Board Meeting

Our Next Board Meeting is Scheduled For:

Past Board Meeting Minutes

October 28, 2021 Minutes

Sept 16, 2021 Minutes

July 15, 2021 Minutes

May 20, 2021 Minutes

March 18, 2021 Minutes

November 19, 2020 Minutes

September 24, 2020 Minutes

July 16, 2020 Minutes

May 27, 2020 Minutes

January 16, 2020 Minutes

October 24, 2019 Minutes

July 17, 2019 Minutes

July 2, 2019 Minutes

Past Board Meeting Agendas

November 2021 Agenda

October 2021 Agenda

September 2021 Agenda

July 2021 Agenda

May 2021 Agenda

March 2021 Agenda

July 2020 Agenda

May 2020 Agenda

January 2020 Agenda

October 2019 Agenda

County Commission Reports

November 2021 County Update

September 2021 County Update

July 2021 County Update

May 2021 County Update

March 2021 County Update

November 2020 County Update

September 2020 County Update

January 2020 County Update

November 2019 County Update

September 2019 County Update

You're signed up!

Please refer to the COVID-19 page for the most up-to-date information.

Savannah's Book Recommendations

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

Eryn's Book Recommendations

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

Joyce's Book Recommendations

Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Paige's Book Recommendations

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb