New Jersey Room Awarded Grant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 18^th, 2024

Jersey City Free Public Library
Nailah Andre
PR & Communications Coordinator
nandre@jclibrary.org

New Jersey Room Awarded a Grant to Digitize Historical Documents

Jersey City, New Jersey — April 18^th, 2024 — Jersey City Free Public Library’s New Jersey Room has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, joining libraries nationwide in receiving support through the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant program. This grant will help to fund the New Jersey Room’s effort in digitizing scrapbooks compiled by the city in the 1960s and volumes of municipal records dating back to the 19^th century.

John Beekman, Chief Librarian, Jersey City Free Public Library expressed “The Jersey City Free Public Library is honored to work with esteemed libraries from across the country on this innovative project spearheaded by the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. The municipal minutes and records that make up the bulk of our contribution contain a wealth of information, not only on the workings of city government and agencies, but the people whose work is recorded there. Names and activities present in these records that never made the news will now be discoverable through search rather than the needle-in-a-haystack experience of poring over individual volumes of minutes. Making these materials accessible will provide a tool for enriching the record of city life across the 19^th and 20^th centuries.”

Thank you to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Internet Archive and our partnering libraries for supporting Jersey City Free Public Library’s New Jersey Room.

About Jersey City Free Public Library

The Jersey City Free Public Library (JCFPL) is the largest municipal library in the State of New Jersey, serving one of the most diverse cities in the country. The Library meets the needs of the community by providing a wide array of programming and resources, and access to a broad range of print, digital, and audiovisual collections. The Library has been a cornerstone of Jersey City’s growing and changing community for more than 120 years.