There are a number of projects in the works at the Williamson County Historical Society which we hope to have implemented over the winter months as follows:

• Online membership applications and renewals will be made available on our website through a secure PayPal account which means you can use your PayPal account or a credit card to join or pay your dues.
• Indexes for all of our Williamson County records related to divorce, chancery, criminal, common law, partitions and injunctions will be made available online and the ability to purchase the contents of these files using a credit card or PayPal account will be made available online.
• Our bookstore list of items we sell will be improved dramatically with photos and complete descriptions of each book or article. Orders will be able to be placed and paid for online instead of having to rely on regular mail and sending a check.
• Numerous federal, state, and private grants are being looked into to improve the museum and preserve and display its artifacts. This has become an ongoing project that is taking a lot of volunteer time, but hopefully will pay off eventually down the road.
• A digital media project is now underway and will hopefully be completed over the winter. This project is related to the inventorying and cataloging of all photos and pictures contained within the museum. All photos are being scanned, cleaned up and catalogued into a database which will allow searches for specific people, places and things. An earlier failed attempt to get this done under an Illinois Humanities Council grant only resulted in the resolve to get it done anyway. As much data as can be known about each photo will be retained in the database.
• The new Marion High School in Marion is going to have some very large murals in it which will be collages of historic photos related to the Marion High School past in various areas such as athletics and art. The museum has been helping the company involved find plenty of photos for them to use on the project.
• There is an attempt being made to encourage volunteer museum workers to develop areas of expertise related to our counties history such as Civil War, the depression, prohibition, etc. If you have an area of expertise already or wish to do research on a particular area of interest, please contact us.
• We are seeking volunteers who can help field answers to queries on this website.

As always, we really need volunteer help for our organization to work and, of course, a number of us are stretched pretty thin. If you have a skill set related to research, grant writing, website or computer expertise, fundraising or video production, we could use your help. Use the Contact Us page to volunteer.