The Norfolk Historical Society has received a grant of $60,546 from the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development to make improvements to its historic building on the village green.

One of the main goals of the renovation is to create a reception area to welcome visitors to the museum where now there is just a table.

Barry Webber, executive director of the society, says first-time visitors have repeatedly commented, “What’s the story of Norfolk?” By changing the entrance and redoing the space where the Country Store exhibit is currently located, he hopes to be able to tell a fuller and more comprehensive story of Norfolk’s mercantile and industrial past.

Webber also plans to renovate the three storage spaces upstairs, making more space to have small programs and to enable researchers to study the collection. He says that the museum wants to make the collection more accessible for study.

In addition, Webber wants to digitize as much of the collection as possible. The Historical Society has already received some money from the Norfolk Foundation and the AKC to start this work, and the society was able to hire Babs Perkins to digitize 450 glass plate negatives by Marie Kendall images, some of which are currently on exhibit in the museum. Eventually there will be a computer terminal in the new welcome area downstairs that visitors can use to search the collection.

The Historical Society’s contribution to the grant is a 25 percent match, or $23,000. Webber hopes to get some phases of the project started in February or March and have the new exhibition space ready for the museum’s June 1 opening. The balance of the project may take a year to complete.