Being involved with two local societies (NCGS and WNYGS) that will be celebrating their 50th anniversaries this upcoming decade, I was interested in Paula Stuart-Warren’s presentation titled: Memories: Compline a Genealogical Society Anniversary Booklet. What an enjoyable presentation! Paula was very interesting to listen to and engaging.
She talked about her experience writing a 50th anniversary booklet for her state society. The handout for this presentation is extremely well-done and will serve as my notes for this presentation.
A few takeaways that really sunk in were:
- There are so many different ways and sections that you could include in a book like this such as newspaper articles, past presidents, etc.
- Include many members to help share their memories, photos, etc. then share those memories with others and that will often jog other’s memories to add additional info.
- No one can do this alone. You need lots of help.
- It will take a lot longer than you think that it might. Plan at least 18 months, two years would be better.
- You can read through the old newsletters to help come up with the history.
As I was listening to this presentation, I was wondering what type of book that I could do for NCGS. One idea that came to me was creating a “best of our newsletter” which could extract and abstract articles from 50 years of newsletters. I love this idea and it sounds so much easier to put together than a full history that Paula was talking about.
You can learn more about Paula Stuart-Warren on her website and follow her active blog at: http://genealogybypaula.com.