CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERSHIP REPORT.
At the end of the last AGM the committee of the Federation was short of three members. I am happy to say that we have attracted two replacements to the committee, Richard O’Brien, who has taken up the role of treasurer and Les Gilpin a committee member. We are still short of a member if anyone would like to join us.
Over the last year the main activity of the Federation has been the Development of the Archive project. Last year we ran two archive training days following on from these Tim Haldon offered his archives cataloguing programme which he has developed for the Alston Moor Local History Society archives. The federation has taken up this kind offer and we are in the process of rolling out this to a number of member groups to use with their own archives.
To allow us to do this we have had to enlarge the hosting available for the Federation website and this was made possible with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund via the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership which was sourced by Ruth Langley. I would like to thank Nigel Mills for all his hard work on this subject.
We held four cluster meetings recently to which 43 members from 30 member groups were represented. We are looking at the discussions and the comments that came out of these meetings and will try and put some actions forward. There will be a report in the next Bulletin.
We are starting a series of ‘How to Days’ with the first on the 27[th] November on wills and inventories. Further days and subjects will be announced. If anyone has any ideas for a study day again we are open to ideas. I would like to thank June Hill for all her hard work in organising the cluster meetings and the study days and this convention.
In the last year Ruth Lawley has taken over as the Bulletin editor and I think we can all agree she has continued with the high standards. However the Bulletin is only as good as the material the Ruth gets. We did have a number of people around the county who sent the editor details of happenings in their areas. Alas most of these people have now moved on and we are looking for new people. If you could help please see Ruth.
One of the services that everyone agrees is a highlight of the Federation is the weekly newsletter sent out by Liz Kerry. Again these are only as good as the information received. Please send the details of your events to Liz. I would like to thank Liz for all her work in producing the newsletters.
I would also like to thank all the other members of the committee for their work in running the Federation.
Membership of the Federation stands at approximately 62 groups, I say approximately we are still awaiting this year’s membership fees from around 7 groups. This is down from 68 this time last year and is mainly due to groups stopping functioning because of the problems of recruiting a functional committee to run them. This is also one of the main problems that came out of the Cluster meetings with a number of groups saying they are struggling to get a committee. Individual membership now stands at 44 down from 68.
And finally I would like to thank the Askham and Lowther Group for their help today.