Genealogy and Local History Section

Annual Report 2001-2002

At the IFLA Conference in Copenhagen in 1997, the Genealogy and Local History Discussion group was founded, holding its first ordinary meeting in 1998. At the Jerusalem conference in 2000, there was much interest expressed in trying to upgrade the discussion group into a section. In the event, the attempt was successful, and the Genealogy and Local History Section was sanctioned by IFLA.

Melvin Thatcher was appointed chairman of the section, and he succeeded in assembling an interim committee with Janice McFaclane from the National Library of Scotland as treasurer, Harriet Kasow, Media Librarian, Bloomfield Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem as information coordinator and the undersigned, Ruth Hedegaard, Vendsyssel historiske Museum, Historisk Arkiv, Denmark as secretary.

The committee started functioning via e-mail discussions. We developed the strategic plan and goals for the section, planned our first committee meetings and organised our open session in Glasgow.

• We continued discussing our strategic plan and following the decisions decided upon at the meetings we are close to completing it and will be putting it on the Internet soon. We discussed the content of our first newsletter, which is now completed and put on the IFLA-net. We still need to have hardcopies of it sent to members of our section and to other interested persons and institutions
• We had a very well attended open session with good and interesting speakers.
• We had a successful day with our off-site visits, visiting the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and the Register General Office in Edinburgh.
• We created a leaflet describing our section, which we handed out during the conference.
• We discussed various possibilities for future activities, such as the preservation of oral history, closer co-operation with the maps and geography section and children, genealogy and local history. I had contacted the Children's Libraries and School Libraries section in connection with this latter idea. We decided that our theme for Berlin should be "Co-operation among Archives, Libraries and Museums.
• We discussed the ways of recruiting members to our section

Following the Glasgow conference we are now working on the Berlin conference

In Glasgow we had contacted Peter Borchardt in Germany who has shown much interest in our section. He volunteered to put together a programme for our off-site visits in Berlin.

As mentioned above our theme for the Berlin Conference is co-operation among archives, libraries and museums, with me as the one responsible for getting speakers. We have sent out a call for papers, and have received several responses. We have to make our choices after the deadline.