The Newark Archives Project In 2009 the Newark History Society launched an ambitious project to encourage research in Newark history by providing a comprehensive online guide with information about primary source materials related to Newark.

To search the more than 4,000 collection descriptions the Project has created to date, click here http://nap.rutgers.edu

In partnership with the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience and The John Cotton Dana Library, both at Rutgers University-Newark, the Project’s aim is to survey and describe collections of papers of individuals and families; records of government agencies, organizations, and businesses; photographs; film; and audio collections covering all aspects and from all periods of Newark history.

Project Director Gail Malmgreen and her colleagues have searched widely, from well-known records to material that has never been catalogued before. They have surveyed in person more than 100 repositories in Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, and elsewhere. They have also described hundreds more Newark-related collections from repositories throughout the country based on microfilmed or digitized material and online guides.

Now you can locate primary source materials from many repositories and many periods—from the minutes of 17th-century town meetings, to little-known Civil War and World War I letters, oral histories, theater scrapbooks, ethnic and women’s history collections, and photographs depicting every aspect of Newark life from the 1860s to the 2000s—in one place.

The Newark Archives Project’s searchable online database is constantly growing. Created by the Technical Services Division of Rutgers University Libraries, the database will interest a wide range of users—archivists, librarians, museum curators, students and teachers, local historians, government employees, the media—in fact, everyone who has an interest in Newark’s proud municipal history.

The Newark History Society has received new grants to fund ongoing work on the Newark Archives Project database. The New Jersey Historical Commission awarded a $20,000 grant for FY2022, and then extended it through June 2023 with an additional $20,000 allocation. Also, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded a $5,000 COVID-19 Response Grant, with funding made possible through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.