Faces and Places Photograph Donation 101

Have you amassed a collection of photographs, or does someone you know have a collection of photographs sitting around, unsure of what to do with them? Whether it’s old albums, boxes of slides, or a collection of postcards, the Kenton County Public Library can assist you in preserving them for generations to come.

The Kenton County Public Library welcomes donations of physical and digital copies of your family and local history related photographs. We accept donations in various formats, including color photographs, black & white photographs, film negatives, slides, and postcards. By donating photographs to the library, you contribute to preserving local history and your family's history. We accept photograph donations related to area families, schools, graduations, houses, old buildings, new buildings, businesses, sporting events, construction, streetscapes, social gatherings, or happenings around town.

The physical photographs added to our collection are preserved with archival materials and securely filed away in our archives. All images are converted to digital files, indexed, and uploaded to our photograph database, Faces and Places. When we index photographs, we input as much information as possible, making them easily searchable by keyword in our database. Faces and Places is free and available to the public, currently featuring around 130,000 images with new uploads frequently. We would love to add your photographs to our collection.

At the Covington branch in the Local History and Genealogy Department, we offer several pieces of scanning equipment free for public use. This equipment can assist you in preserving your photographs through the digitization process. You can scan photographs, slides, film negatives, etc., and save the digital copy to a memory card or flash drive. Digital copies can then be shared through various methods, such as social media and genealogy websites.

If you have any questions about donating your photographs to our collection, accessing Faces and Places, or making an appointment for assistance with using the scanning equipment, please call us at 859.962.4070 or send us an email at history@kentonlibrary.org. 

Blog written by Charles Halbrook, Local History and Genealogy Library Associate at the Covington Branch.