There’s a drive in the US to make October “family history month“, and tweets from this week’s OCLC special meeting “Moving the Past into the Future: Special Collections in a Digital Age” declared…

“80% of people who use archives are family historians – the genealogists“

So, it is just as well RunCoCo is speaking to the Federation of Family History Societies this weekend, at their Education Seminar in Northampton.

The agenda:

• Education, Education, Education – This session will introduce a couple of specific points for discussion and then you will get the chance to tell us, and discuss, what you think the Federation should be doing, or helping you to do, to further our common educational aims.
• The Great War Archive – Alun Edwards of Oxford University Computing Services will introduce you to the The Great War Archive, a community collection project. You can view the results of this project for yourselves alongside a collection of WWI Poetry. The focus of this talk will not be on the results. Rather, it will focus on the methodology and bespoke software behind the project. This session will have something for webmasters, for project coordinators and anyone with thoughts of running a community collection project.
• 21st Century Archives and the Family Historian – This presentation will be made jointly by the Northamptonshire County Archivist, Sarah Bridges, and her deputy and Public Services Manager, Daniel Williams. Archives are under pressure, what can family historians expect? – and what will family historians get?
• Being a Treasurer (of an FHS) – Mr Griffiths from Dove Naigh Group, who prepares the accounts for Northamptonshire FHS, will be appraising us of the rules and regulations that treasurers of family history societies must abide by. This will be an essential background for new treasurers, an update on recent legislation for existing treasurers and useful background for the rest of your executive committee.

A link to RunCoCo’s presentation will be published soon.