The North Tandridge Local History Centre at Caterham Valley Library,
Surrey is likely to rely on the Internet for access to the 1901 census, as
we do for the IGI via the LDS familysearch site. Of course, if there was a
1901 equivalent of the 1881 census CD set, at an affordable price, we would
go for that. The 1881 census CD resource is very popular at our
twice-monthly volunteer sessions.
The future of local history, I believe, is in partnership projects such as
ours with a mix of volunteers, archivists and librarians enabled to carry
out fundraising, HLF and NOP applications, run websites, and thereby give
greater access to local history resources and rescue 'at risk' material in
private hands through digital imaging projects, etc. The individual local
historian is welcome and valued in this partnership. in our situation, most
are members of the Bourne Society and already engaged in teams preparing
Village History publications.
I would urge unattached local historians to join such teams and share
their knowledge. This teamwork is not necessarily a bar on freelance
publishing, and has the advantage of attracting funding to enable such
publication. Starting with the success of 'Then & Now' photographic
publications in the mid '80s, the Bourne Society has remained in a healthy
financial situation and is in a position to launch new ventures, upgrade
computer facilities for publication production, attract new members (some
1500 at present) and thereby play a greater part in promoting local
history.
Paul Sandford
Bourne Society & NTLHC Management Committee
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Learning Technology Co-ordinator
University of Newcastle
Tel: 0191-222-5183
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