For information concerning specific sites that you may be interested in, or to ask questions regarding the preservation of history in your community, one point of contact is the American Association for State and Local History . They can also be contacted for specifics regarding employment in public history at the local level. Museums and local history sites offer a number of opportunities to preserve and to interpret historical artifacts. One example of a local interest society is the Chicago Historical Society . Like most of the historical associations in this category, the CHS is a private, independent institution devoted to collecting, interpreting, and presenting the multicultural history of its own specific area, in this case Chicago and Illinois, to the public.
Every state has some sort of effort underway to chronicle and interpret the state's past.
A few examples are the New York State Historical Association , the Kansas State Historical Society , and the State Historical Society of Iowa . Not only do these provide a chance to work in historic preservation, education, and outreach, but they also maintain information concerning the more localized historical efforts within the state's borders. Aside from geographically oriented approaches to public history, there are those associations that exist for the purpose of preserving the history of a demographically distinct group within American society. One of the best examples of this is the American Jewish Historical Society . As the oldest ethnic historical organization in the United States, the Society was the first systematic collector of archival, published, and artifactual sources depicting the religious, communal, cultural, and political life of American Jews.