Allegany County
Allegany County Historical Society
ron.taylor@alleganyhistory.org
11 East Greenwood Street, Andover, NY 14806
Contact Name: Ronald G. Taylor
Description: This new countywide museum building is home to a genealogy research center. We need volunteers to help with our museum displays and with digitization of paper records.
Website: http://www.alleganyhistory.org/
Chautauqua County
Fenton History Center
director@fentonhistorycenter.org
67 Washington St, Jamestown, NY 14701
Contact Name: Noah Goodling
Description: The Fenton History Center is a non-profit museum, genealogical and local research center, and collections repository located in southwestern NYS. We have two buildings as part of our campus, an 1863 Italianate Villa-style mansion where we house our museum and hold many of our public programs, and an 1846 Greek Revival-style house where we house our research center and a portion of our artifactual and archival collections. Our collections are focused on local and regional history, with the majority having a direct relation to Jamestown, the city where we are located. We do our best to ensure that any volunteer or intern who works with us gets experience working with a professional and project that suits their interests.
Website: https://www.fentonhistorycenter.org/
Erie County
Aurora Town Historian's Office
historian@townofaurora.com
East Aurora, NY 14052
Contact Name: Robert Lowell Goller
Description: The Aurora Town Historian’s Office houses and maintains the official historical archives of the Town of Aurora and Village of East Aurora. It includes more than 40 drawers of family, business and land records; newspapers in all forms (digitized, paper and microfilm formats); and several shelves and drawers of photographs. The collection also includes several maps and the most comprehensive collection of East Aurora High School yearbooks. We are open to the public one day per week for research purposes. We have a number of potential projects, depending on the skills and interests of the students. We have numerous photograph collections that need to be scanned and cataloged. The Historian's Office also is currently finalizing detailed listings and catalogs of every item in the collection in anticipation of a digital card catalog. We also have several collections currently in archival boxes that need to be better cataloged and presented (in acid-free sleeves) for public research. There are many opportunities for a student to take on a specific project and to see it through from start to finish.
Website: http://www.townofaurora.com/departments/historian/
Buffalo Irish Genealogical Society
ngktrees@gmail.com
Buffalo, NY 14420
Contact Name: Nancy Gavin Koester
Description: In addition to working with the Irish records for the city of Buffalo and the surrounding suburbs, we have close ties with the railroad museums, and have been indexing over 13, 000 personnel files. We require intern help in transcribing and indexing cemetery records and newspaper articles.
Website: https://bigswny.org/
Town Historian of Eden
sminekime@hotmail.com
Eden, NY 14057
Contact Name: Susan Minekime
Description: The collection mostly comprises local history, family and genealogy information, ephemera and photos. We welcome research assistance in organizing and cataloging.
Town of Concord Historical Society Inc.
histor7496@aol.com
23 North Buffalo Street, Springville, NY 14141
Contact Name: David C. Batterson
Description: The Town of Concord Historical Society is spread over five separate buildings—the Lucy Bensley Genealogy Center, the mercantile country store, Warner Museum, carriage house, and Heritage History Building—staffed by local volunteers. We need help in organizing, displaying, digitizing, and researching our records. The Lucy Bensley Genealogy Center has many opportunities and projects for research ,digitizing, filing and cataloging along with designing displays and setting up educational programs and tours for school students and seniors that we offer throughout the year.
Town of Grand Island
jodi@giecom.net
Grand Island, NY 14702
Contact Name: Jodi Robinson
Description: Collection of town history and local historical files in need of organization and digitization
Town of Newstead/Village of Akron
historian@townofnewstead.com
Akron, NY 14001
Contact Name: Donald Holmes
Description: The town records of Akron document its time as the cement capital of the United States, as well as preserving records of local families. The archivist has been working on organizing these records and in engaging in community outreach. Intern assistance would be invaluable in increasing outreach to the local school district and also to senior citizens.
Western New York Genealogical Society, Inc.
outreach@wnygs.org
Hamburg, NY 14075
Contact Name: Jennifer Liber Raines
Description: The Western New York Genealogical Society was founded in 1974 to help preserve and encourage interest in the area's rich genealogical heritage. Our work focuses on the eight counties of Western New York - Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Wyoming, Orleans, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany - that were originally part of the Holland Land Company Purchase. We seek interns who can assist with digitizing, transcribing, and indexing records, and with accessibility efforts/partnership coordination.
Website: http://www.wnygs.org/
West Seneca Historical Society Museum
historicalsociety@twsny.org
919 Mill Road, West Seneca, NY 14424
Contact Name: Jim Pace
Description: We house an extensive collection of artifacts dating from the pre-colonial period to the present day in a historic building listed on the National Register of Historical Places. Our building was part of the Community of True Inspiration, a German-speaking religious group. We are looking for intern assistance with artifact inventory, document filing, school tours.
Genesee County
Genesee County History Department
Michael.Eula@co.genesee.ny.us
3837 West Main Street Road County Building #2, Batavia, NY 14020
Contact Name: Michael J. Eula
Description: We are a public history department responsible for the maintenance of the Genesee County archives. We operate a research library replete with primary and secondary holdings with a focus on Genesee County history. We also conduct public lectures on a regular basis reflective of the ongoing research and interpretation of Genesee County history. Genealogical research is also a substantial part of our function. Research assistance for ongoing projects in primary source material. This includes the search for relevant primary source materials utilized by the County Historian in various research projects. There is also an ongoing need to index nineteenth century legal documents and more recent newspaper items.
Website: http://co.genesee.ny.us/departments/history/index.php
Livingston County
Big Springs Historical Society
donald_mckay@bellsouth.net
3095 Main St, Caledonia, NY 14423
Contact Name: Donald McKay
Description: We require interns to help with the organization and digitization of materials.
Website: https://bigspringsmuseum.org/
Leicester Town & Village Historian
Leichist@msn.com
Leicester, NY 14481
Contact Name: Karen Roffe
Description: The Leicester Historian Files are immense and contain information on a variety of subjects such as inventors, veterans, agriculture, businesses, mining, photographs and other topics. Some items have been scanned and copied to discs most have not. Records management is a priority and reorganization of the files is an ongoing event. Some of the areas I would like to improve are an inventory of the obituary files to record historical information contained in them, a concise history of Leicester agriculture, photographic inventory.
Livingston County Historical Society and Museum
lchistory@frontier.com
30 Center St, Geneseo, NY 14454
Contact Name: Anna Kowalchuk
Description: The Livingston County Historical Society is an educational institution that works collaboratively to engage and connect the public with the rich history of the county in an effort to provide a broader appreciation of the present through a deeper understanding of the past. LCHS uses its collections, programming and partnerships to meet this mission and to gain recognition as the county's leading institution for heritage tourism and history education. We seek a collections management intern who is interested in inventorying and cataloging collections at the Livingston County Museum located at 30 Center Street in the Village of Geneseo. Interns will work with actual museum objects and tasks may include: cleaning, measuring, labeling, photographing,researching, writing donor letters, and inputting items into the museum database. We also seek an intern to assist with marketing and social media for the Livingston County Museum. This includes graphics for posters, postcards, and website advertisements, website updates, and postings on the institution's FaceBook page.
SUNY Geneseo
dicarlo@geneseo.edu
1 College Circle, Career Development, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY 14454
Contact Name: Rob DiCarlo
Description: My role is to assist students with finding internships and helping with the process of arranging academic credit. I am also a resource for organizations seeking interns and employees in all areas. I do hire paid interns in marketing (two each year) and paid interns as peer career mentors (four each year). These internships are posted in Handshake.
Monroe County
Lisa Kleman (Local Historian/Writer/Teacher)
lisamkleman@gmail.com
Rochester, NY 14612
Description: I research, write, and give public talks about the musical Dossenbachs and the City of Rochester from the 1870s-1940s. The Dossenbachs were locally-famous musicians and conductors who founded the Rochester Park Band, the school which became the Eastman School of Music, and the Rochester Orchestra (precursor to today's RPO), and who were George Eastman's musicians, playing at his East Avenue mansion for twice-weekly musicales and big parties from 1905-1919. I require intern assistance in visiting local research institutions to photograph relevant documents, organize digital files, review recorded interviews and conduct new ones.
Website: http://livinginthepasts.blogspot.com/
Office of the Rochester City Historian/Rochester Public Library Local History & Genealogy Division
michelle.finn@libraryweb.org
115 South Avenue, Rochester, NY 14604
Contact Name: Michelle Finn
Description: The Office of the City Historian/Local History & Genealogy Division routinely accepts college interns to assist with day-to-day tasks and special projects within the office. Interns will work under the direction of the City Historian, Deputy City Historian, and/or other professional staff. They will receive an orientation to the office and training on the skills necessary to complete the tasks to which they are assigned. The Office of the City Historian/Local History & Genealogy Division is currently seeking interns to work on the following projects: RochesterVoices.org, a digital humanities project designed to engage K-12 students, as well as the general public, in the study of local, state, and national history by allowing users to explore the letters, diaries, interviews, and other personal accounts of Rochesterians who experienced the past firsthand; organization and conservation of materials from the Rochester Public Library’s Local History & Genealogy Division; identifying, inventorying, and cataloging materials in the Harold W. Lara Negative Collection.
Out Alliance
evelynb@outalliance.org
100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607
Contact Name: Evelyn Bailey
Description: We are a not for profit which is the recognized voice of the Rochester LGBTQ community. Our focus is advocacy, education, and history preservation.
Website: https://outalliance.org/
Rochester Genealogical Society
genbook@gmail.com
Rochester, NY 14610
Contact Name: Larry Naukam
Description: The RGS requires interns who can help with the maintenance and digitizing of its two historical indexes (200,000+ names from church records; 300,000+ images of church and town historian’s records.) Our digitizing project is going well, but needs some streamlining to get the product out to the end users in a quicker manner. A person with computer/graphics/marketing skills can learn how to make such historical materials more accessible to the real world.
Website: https://nyrgs.org/index.php
Rochester Museum & Science Center
sball@rmsc.org
657 East Ave., Rochester, NY 14607
Contact Name: Stephanie Ball
Description: The Rochester Museum & Science Center library supports the Museum's mission of stimulating broad community interest and understanding of science and technology, and their impact, past, present, and future, on our lives by providing access to resources and archival collections of Rochester businesses, society, science, technology, and so much more. We require intern help in processing and describing archival collections, inventory of paper collections (prints, maps, scrapbooks, etc.), and assistance with the day to day library/archival repository tasks.
Website: https://rmsc.org
Town of Rush
sue@townofrush.com
5977 East Henrietta Road, Rush, NY 14543
Contact Name: Susan Mee
Description: The Rush Historian's Office has a collection of family biographical files, information related to the town by geographical district and various other documents relating to the town's history (assorted deeds, school year books, photos, etc). Adjoining the historian's office is a history room which houses a collection of artifacts. These artifacts include an assortment of items from farm tools, Rush High School band cape, quilt from Industry ribbons, Rush Fireman's uniform, framed photos. I would like assistance in continuing digitization efforts, cataloging collection items, and also creating digital stories with software programs such as Atavist.
Niagara County
Town of Niagara
pames@townofniagara.com
Niagara Falls, NY 14304
Contact Name: Pete Ames
Description: Home to a collection of materials dating back to the establishment of the Town of Niagara in 1812. The Archival Digitization Internship at the Town of Niagara will provide interns with the opportunity for hands-on experience digitizing historical documents. Over the course of the semester, the intern will be responsible for digitizing materials which cover a period of over 200 years. In addition to digitizing those archival materials, further research will be required. A research project will be designed to focus on intern’s interests and experience, and will assist the Town of Niagara in further documentation of their residents.
Niagara County
catherine.emerson@niagaracounty.com
139 Niagara Street, Lockport, NY 14094
Contact Name: Catherine Emerson
Description: The Niagara County Historians Office, located in Lockport, NY, has a wide variety of archival materials dealing with all aspects of county history. We have unpublished letters -- such as those from WWI nurse Mary Belknap and area soldiers, diaries ranging from Lucinda Knapp 's (1836 - 1864), Artemis Comstock 1848 - 1882, Brown and Sabin family diaries, and letters, Lunacy Trail documents or Jane Porter, Poor House records, Oyer & Terminer, church records,newspapers from the 1820s to present, Mt. View Sanitarium, family papers, and photographs -- just to name a few. Interns are welcome to work on cataloging, digitizing, organizing and writing about any of the above.
Niagara County Historical Society
curator@niagarahistory.org
215 Niagara Street, Lockport, NY 14094
Contact Name: Terry C. Abrams
Description: The role of the Niagara County Historical Society is to promote the cultural heritage related to the Erie Canal and the rich history of Niagara County. The Historical Society offers one collections internship and one office internship every summer with funds provided by the Grigg-Lewis Foundation. These internships are limited to undergraduate students who reside in eastern Niagara County attending any college, or students attending colleges in Niagara County.
Website: https://niagarahistory.org/
Onondaga County
The Upper New York Conference Archives of the United Methodist Church
kjones@albany.edu
7481 Henry Clay Blvd., Liverpool, NY 13088
Contact Name: Kenneth Jones
Description: The archives contain four recently combined regional archives into one new location. The collection includes all the closed church records for the United Methodist Churches in Upstate NY, Conference records and journals, pastors’ memoirs, and a small library of Methodist related historical books. We need interns to review recently closed church records to separate out those records for destruction from those requiring preservation, and to refile records in acid-free folders and boxes.
Ontario County
Ontario County Historical Society
director@ochs.org
55 North Main St, Canandaigua, NY 14424
Contact Name: Edward Vamo
Description: The Historical Society, founded in 1902, is home to a large collection and regularly hosts Humanities NY projects. Prospective interns could work on projects such as developing short videos for our YouTube channel, researching items for our quarterly newsletter, and event development.
http://www.ochs.org/
Towns of Bristol and S. Bristol and joint Historical Society
beththomas1015@gmail.com
South Bristol, NY 14512
Contact Name: Elizabeth Thomas
Description: We have a large collection of unsorted files, genealogical binders, scrapbooks, maps, diaries, photographs, and books that need to be inventoried and organized.
Town of Gorham
historian@gorham-ny.org
Gorham, NY 14461
Contact Name: Dennis Hogan
Description: The historian’s office holds a number of local records, while the associated Historical Society museum/research room is housed in a former church built in 1842, a ca. 1900 post office building, and a WWII plane spotter building. Help is needed with ongoing digitization and indexing projects, accessioning, filing, and display design.
Orleans County
Clarendon Historical Society
clarendon_hs@yahoo.com
16385 Church Street, Holley, NY 14470
Contact Name: Melissa Ierlan
Description: We have three locations that house artifacts or information that directly relate to Clarendon and Orleans County history: the town office building, the historical society buildings (which include a one room school house), and a barn. Interns could assist in many projects including file organization and digitization.
Orleans County Department of History
Matt.Ballard@orleanscountyny.gov
34 E. Park St, Albion, NY 14411
Contact Name: Matthew Ballard
Description: The Orleans County Department of History was established in 1934 with the appointment of Katherine Rowley as the first county historian. Over the last 85 years the collections within the Department of History have grown exponentially from an early gathering of newspaper clippings and scrapbooks to an extensive collection of photographs, ephemera, documents/records pertaining to local organizations, unique ledgers, and rare books. The collections relate specifically to the history of Orleans County and the fourteen municipalities within it. The Department of History also holds a handful of interesting local artifacts relating to World War One and other interesting events/activities. Aside from the collections, the Department of History is heavily involved in community programs and activities, assisting with local educational programs/events, providing tours and speaking engagements, visiting area schools, producing weekly articles for local newspapers, assisting with county preservation projects, acting as a liaison with local historical agencies, and overseeing the activities of the fourteen municipal historians. We are interested in hosting interns who will research and write about local historical subjects for newspaper articles or county publication; assist with cataloging and collection organization; research for local community tours; create local library exhibits; manage social media; deal with research queries.
Wayne County
Wayne County Historical Society
ljorgensen03@yahoo.com
21 Butternut St, Lyons, NY 14489
Contact Name: Loreen Jorgensen
Website: https://www.waynehistory.org
Description: Wayne County Historical Society has a wide range of materials. As the former Sheriff's residence and County jail, there are a number of records of criminals incarcerated there and the weapons they possessed at the time of their booking. May of these records require further research, cataloging, and scanning.
Historic Palmyra Inc.
bjfhpinc@rochester.rr.com
132 Market Street, Palmyra, NY 14522
Contact Name: Bonnie J. Hays
Description: Five museums are hosted in one location along the Erie Canal in the Village of Palmyra: the Alling Coverlet Museum , the Palmyra Historical Museum, the Wm. Phelps General Store and home, the Palmyra Print Shop, and the Erie Canal Interactive/interpretive Depot.. Interns are welcome to assist with museum collections, online promotion, events, schedules, and tours. We are in need of cataloging archives and computerizing items in the Phelps, historical, and print shop. Interactive activities in the Depot with new exhibit assistance with our archivist and collections manager. We do everything from the presentation of the buildings which are our largest artifacts to the fine tuning of the details in the exhibits.
Hotchkiss Peppermint Museum
alenap4@gmail.com
95 Water Street, Lyons, NY 14489
Contact Name: Patricia Alena
Description: Our museum houses many rooms of exhibits with display cases, an archives that is in desperate need of help, and a flood of tourists over the summer visiting to hear the story of the Peppermint Factory. Help is needed in our archives. Each year we receive more and more artifacts that need to be accessioned and digitized. We have exhibits that need to be changed to encourage visitors, and files that need updating.
The Marion Museum at Jennie’s House
marion.ny.historian@gmail.com
3497 South Main St, Marion, NY 14505
Contact Name: Caryn Devlin
Description: The museum is currently moving to a newly renovated building, and new displays need to be set up. The collection has largely been tracked using paper methods, but a new digital catalogue needs to be established. This is basically building a museum from the ground up!
Museum of Wayne County History
info@waynehistory.org
21 Butternut St, Lyons, NY 14489
Contact Name: Larry Ann Evans
Description: The museum is housed in the former Wayne County Jail and Sheriff's residence built in 1856 and used until 1960. The 24 cells are still intact with the original inmate art work on the walls. Three floors of exhibition space include Lyons Pottery & Clyde Glass, the Military Room which spans the War of 1812 to Vietnam War, a Child's 1856 bedroom, all concentrating on Wayne County artifacts and history. We seek interns interested in scanning of photo files, cataloging donated books in the library, helping out at fairs and festivals, docent tours and assisting the collections committee.
Website: https://www.waynehistory.org/
Town of Huron
rfox@townofhuron.org
Huron, NY 14590
Contact Name: Rosa Fox
Description: The Town of Huron owns and maintains three historic buildings: The Old Town Hall (the History Center/Museum, housing a collection of local mid-19th to mid-20th-century artifacts); the Huron Grange; and the Dayton Mills Schoolhouse. We would welcome intern assistance in cataloging books, maps, and records; researching exhibit items and developing display signage; and with organizing Huron Day, a day of local history celebration.
Village of Sodus Point
Historian@soduspoint.info
8356 Bay Street, Sodus Point, NY 14555
Contact Name: Tom Lightfoot
Description: I research, gather, preserve and disseminate information about the history of Sodus Point, NY. Appreciation of the rich past of our village by residents and visitors is the beginning of the process to preserve and restore historical buildings and artifacts important for understanding who we are and where we came from. I welcome interns to help with research and interviews, writing and advocacy.
Wayne County Historian
historian@co.wayne.ny.us
7376 Rt. 31, Public Safety Building, Lyons, NY 14489
Contact Name: Peter Evans
Description: We hold all the county historical records, included census returns, naturalization and court records, land deeds, etc. We would welcome help in processing research requests, scanning and indexing materials, evaluating and conserving at-risk materials. If a student prefers field work, we have a team attempting to document and describe upwards to 2000 historic places around Wayne County.
Wyoming County
Letchworth State Park Interpretive Department/ New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation
Karen.Russell@parks.ny.gov; Brian.Scriven@parks.ny.gov
Letchworth State Park, Castile, NY 14427
Contact Name: Brian Scriven, Historic Site Manager; Karen Russell, Museum Assistant
Description: Letchworth State Park includes environmental, historic, and recreational resources and is open year round. The Interpretive Department helps to "interpret" those resources to the public. In addition to the environmental aspect of the park, there is a rich history to the park. The Interpretive Department oversees artifacts and displays which are housed at the William Pryor Letchworth Museum. There are also many documents related to Mr. Letchworth's life and legacy housed in the Library at the Visitors Center. We seek intern assistance in collections management, artifact organization, record compilation, document digitization, and public program development.
Town & Village of Arcade Historian
historyjeff@yahoo.com
Arcade, NY 14009
Contact Name: Jeff Mason
Description: The collection contains documents and photos and some artifacts pertaining to the Town and Village of Arcade and the Pioneer Central School District.
Warsaw Historical Society / Gates House Museum
gateshouse1@frontier.com
15 Perry Avenue, Warsaw, NY 14569
Contact Name: George Anna Almeter
Description: The Warsaw Historical Society showcases its collections in the Seth M. Gates House Museum, built in 1824 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992 and the Heritage New York Underground Railroad Trail since 2005. Collections include exhibits depicting aspects of Warsaw life from the 1830’s to the present, particularly business, manufacturing and agricultural history. Special exhibits highlight the Underground Railroad period, the Civil War and Suffrage movement. We offer many learning experiences and projects under the direction of the Society’s Curator, including collections management, item retrieval, exhibition planning and research, donation processing, research assistance, and giving tours.
Wyoming County Historian's Office
camrhein@wyomingco.net
26 Linwood Avenue, Warsaw, NY 14569
Contact Name: Cindy Amrhein