Community Archives Consulting

We want to empower people in our community to capture, save, control, and share their own stories, so we’re here to help when you find yourself asking, “what do we do with all of our stuff?” We offer free support and consulting for individuals and groups with community archives, whether they want to organize materials in a current storage area, create a preservation plan as part of larger reflections on organizational legacy, or find the right repository to house their collections in the future.

We also offer up to 6 hours of free consulting services that can be tailored to an individual’s or organization’s needs, ranging from a site visit to assess organizational challenges to a discussion with staff and Board members about long-term storage and access goals.

Staff Bio

Kate Wells, Curator of Rhode Island Collections:
Kate Wells has been the Curator of Rhode Island Collections at the Providence Public Library since 2013 after over a decade as an archivist and librarian in university libraries, state historical societies and municipal record collections across the country. In her current role, she focuses on demystifying the experience of collecting and accessing historic materials through supporting community archives, outreach for creative use of library collections and utilizing metadata and semantics in access models. Her professional and personal interests in history often overlap and inform personal explorations into the intersections of history of place, visual arts and contemporary culture. Her mission is to facilitate communication, inclusion, and connections to history in order to catalyze social justice and empowerment in communities and cultural heritage organizations.