Going solo or working with others?

Whatever your preference, getting together with like-minded individuals can add inspiration and energy to a study. From a small gathering in a member’s sitting room to a full-blown local history group, the knowledge passed down from long-standing residents about their family and friends is priceless. Precious reminiscences cannot be captured in traditional archival records. An eighty year old who, in his youth, remembered an eighty year old may recall handed down anecdotes from over two or more generations.

What could be more satisfying and productive than gathering together current residents to share and demonstrate a collection of records, maps, old postcards and photographs? An open day with an invitation to bring ‘show and tell’ artefacts can have current residents bring in paintings from above mantle-pieces, grandparents’ Sunday School certificates and reminiscences. Oral history may bring the wartime memories of evacuees, stories of when the steeple got damaged in a gale or where the old post office used to be situated. A group of former pupils can name all the children on a school photograph from sixty years ago.

These personal, donated and borrowed records are history too and usually end up being stored in a heap in the owner’s home or the researcher’s office.

Your project would run more smoothly by recording them using an effortless fingertip retrieval and cross-referencing system for every individual and property.

Make the heap system a thing of the past by using Name & Place.