NEHGS Internship

Northeastern's masters program has an internship requirement, similar to it's co-op program in its undergraduate school. I applied and was recently accepted to an internship at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. I love every moment of it. I'm in Research Services, and each day help clients solve their genealogical "brick walls". The library's collection of resources is top notch, and I get different styles of cases all the time, which allows me to explore and utilize a wide variety of resources of different types (such as land records, probate, taxes, vital records, local histories, immigration, census, maps, atlases, newspapers, etc) or different locations (although NEHGS is largely focused on New England, it has one of the largest Canadian collections in America.. and of course, lots of Irish records for all those Boston Irish descendants!)

For a few years now, I've run a variety of town history and genealogy websites, as well as several family genealogy websites, and receive requests all the time for genealogy assistance and puzzles. In a way, it is very much detective work or puzzle solving: some of it is sheer luck, but mostly it is knowing where to look, what records to use, and understanding what positive as well as negative evidence means. And now that's what I get to do everyday. I'm learning so much, and it is wonderfully satisfying to solve those questions. And sometimes the answers just aren't there, as records were lost or not kept over time.. but more often than not, there is that "ta da!" moment that makes it all worthwhile.

The people there are friendly, smart and in true appreciative style, sometimes incredibly knowledgeable about the most obscure things! It's a good environment to work in and research in.. plus on my breaks I catch a few moments to work on those dratted Ramsdells, Buckleys, Mahons, et al...