Two students awarded internship

History majors Lia Finnegan (’20) and Nicole Font (’20) have been awarded the 2019 Jerome Gillen (’66) Summer Internship through the History Department. The summer internship is designed to give students the opportunity to work in a local New Jersey archive or museum where they will gain first-hand experiences working with historical archival materials. The students will split the $1200 for their work over the course of six weeks.

The New Jersey Room is a collection of materials about New Jersey with an emphasis on Jersey City and Hudson County. The collection, numbering about 20,000 volumes, includes both current and historical information. In addition to books, the New Jersey Room has a complete collection of all published Jersey City/Hoboken city directories dating from 1849 to 1925; an index for the Jersey Journal for the years 1912-1954 and 1969 to the present, a picture collection of over 13,000 images; hundreds of historic and contemporary maps; over 150 periodicals; manuscript collections; and several thousand topical files. The historic collection includes books published about Jersey City, plus privately compiled volumes, such as church histories. We have many books on other towns in Hudson County and throughout the state. The newspaper index and the city directories help those researching their family histories. The department’s rare map collection is extensive.

While working in the archive this summer, Finnegan and Font will also be conducting their own research on a topic of their choice using the primary sources available to them in the New Jersey Room.