With feedback from many community members, the Center relaunched in 2016 with a new vision for the future: the become a leading research and archival center dedicated to the preservation and promotion of South County's rich and diverse history.  The Center is pleased to announce "History in Focus," a dramatically positive step toward realizing that vision.  

"History in Focus," a capital campaign with a goal of reaching $45,000, will support many critical projects at the Center, including:

  • Digitization, processing and preservation of the Kenneth T. Mars, Jr. Photograph Collection, containing more that 35,000 photographs of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, that were taken from the late 1960s through 2011.  This collection has been offered as a donation, but the archiving and storage of a collection of this size requires signifiant resources.  For more information about the Mars Collection, click here.
  • Expansion of the Center's archival storage space into a second room within the Old Jail.  This space will be renovated and outfitted with shelving to properly store important materials, including the Mars Collection.  Special storage capability also will be added to store large format materials.
  • Preservation of the Allen Collection of glass plate negatives in appropriate archival-quality storage materials.  For information about our exhibition of Allen Collection images, please click here.
  • Purchase of additional software, hardware and cloud storage to increase the Center's capacity of digitizing large volumes of material, including the Mars and other photograph collections.
  • The development of hands-on training opportunities for the Center's interns and volunteers as well as new public workshops focused on digitizing and preserving family collections.

Ways to Give

Click Here to Donate to the "History in Focus" Campaign

For questions regarding making a contribution toward this campaign, contact Erica Luke, Executive Director, at erica@southcountyhistorycenter.org or 401.783.1328.

Gifts to the South County History Center, a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 05-6011751), are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.