Replying first to Mike Moore's comments - >Re I was at NAHMO meeting and can
cast some comment -
I understand that the mining-history list does not meet all the requirements
for membership of NAMHO as they stand at the moment. That is not
insurmountable but I'm not surprised that the Council rejected the idea of
membership - given that I had pointed out that the list has no funding. What
did surprise me was that NAMHO was unwilling to make use of the list's
facilities to communicate with a growing sector of the mining history
community. Granted, there are many mining historians without computers let
alone Internet connection - how NAMHO communicates with them is a problem
that the association needs to address, but is no reason to ignore that
sector with whom there is an effective means of communication. NAMHO needs
to educate its constituent societies in the transfer of information and
there is evidently a need for us to educate NAMHO as to how effective the
Internet can be as a communication medium.
To that end I wwill be happy to provide a presentation at the Forest of Dean
meet in September. In the meantime could I ask those list members with
links to the various mining history societies to press their NAMHO
representatives to take action at the next Council meeting.
As both Mike and Adrian have pointed out, NAMHO has been very effective at
bringing together a dispersed mining history community based in societies
developed on parochial lines. Study of the subject is, however, is moving
away from the 'local history' aspect. We increasingly take a national, if
not international, view of developments in mining whilst at the other end of
the spectrum is the interest, very personal and individual, in family links
with mining.
In the long term I believe that NAMHO will have to move to some form of
individual membership to answer the requirements of those interests. The
idea of a national organisation - IMHA - was tried and failed and I, for
one, would not like to see the mining-history list attempting to become
*the* national organisation as suggested by John Colby. At the moment the
list might be the only national grouping, ie. without a parochial structure,
but it is not realistically *open to all* as you need an Internet connection
to join.
Mike Moore also mentions control of information on the list. As you know
this is an unmoderated list - what you post goes to all members. A member
would have to be doing something really outrageous for Roger or I to censor
him/her - and our only means of censor is to remove a member from the list.
So really, there is no control - we rely on the good sense of the members.
The mining-history list is an effective forum for discussion and means of
communication. NAMHO appears to be effective at collecting information but
perhaps not so effective in its dissemination. Here we have a path to a
large grouping of mining historians which NAMHO should use - tell that to
your NAMHO representatives.
Peter
______________________________________________
Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen,
Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 0831 427599
University of Exeter - Department of History
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
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