South Jersey farmhouse, 1938, Library of Congress
Stockton LITT majors, Alums, and friends: I Tom Kinsella want to interest you in projects, big and small, that are concerned with South Jersey.
Most of you know I’ve been working on South Jersey projects with students and community members for a few years now. Here are projects you might work on right now. Just contact me:
- Stairwell Exhibitions: The Stockton library stairwells are plain, bare, expectant real estate. Come down to Special Collections; choose 5 to 7 linked images (bygone Atlantic City, clam digging, cedar bogs; old books) then write the briefest of accompanying blurbs. I’ll get the images blown up; we’ll place them on the wall; presto! an exhibition.
- Research on Stockton before the arrival of Stockton (I know, I know, some folks deny that anything existed on site pre-college. But they are wrong). I am spending the next few Thursdays at the Atlantic County Historical Society researching deeds, maps, and other materials. I’d enjoy anyone’s company as I search.
- Write for Sandy Shorts the newsletter for the South Jersey Culture & History Center. We are always looking for short pieces on interesting places, persons, or events associated with SJ — perhaps that happened right in your own hometown. Sandy Shorts articles are usually 150 to 500 words long. Here’s the most recent issue.
Larger, richer projects include curating full exhibitions of material from Special Collections (on-line or within the library itself), writing informational pamphlets about local history such as the Quakers of Mount Holly (or the Quakers of 18th- and 19th-C Atlantic County) or the World War I munitions factory town of Amatol, NJ (a few miles from campus) or the importance of South Jersey waterways before the coming of the railroad. There are lots of projects. Help me think up and then put on a conference on your favorite SJ topic.
If interested (and I encourage you, I really do) contact me at Thomas.Kinsella@stockton.edu .
