The George Williams Memorial Library is located in the ringing chamber of Winchester Cathedral and is available for readers and borrowers by appointment. The system for loans provides a standard loan period of eight weeks with a liberal renewal policy for serious research and special problems. The only exceptions are the archive material and the Guild’s annual and triennial reports for which, because of their unique importance, loans are solely at the discretion of the librarian. A catalogue of the printed books and of the complete archive is maintained on the Guild website. Part of our collection of archive material, held at the Hampshire Record Office in Sussex Street, Winchester, is available for consultation only. The collection there has the call-number 20M94.
It will come as no surprise that, last year of all years, I have been able to achieve very little - as I reflected in the statement of accounts hereunder. The only substantial achievement has been the acquisition by gift of a run of handsomely-bound Ringing Worlds, 1961 and 1963-2012 from Jenny Elmes, widow of Graham Elmes. As diligent readers of my reports will be aware, this run largely duplicates Ann Strong’s gift of her late husband David’s run, to the Guild Library, bound in loose-leaf binders. The ideal solution would be to house the latter sequence somewhere in the south of our Guild (or even the Channel Islands), to provide access to The Ringing World in hard copy so as to spare potential readers the need to travel to Winchester; but that outcome, despite some enquiries, has yet to materialise.
Aside from the above, my activities have been confined largely to assisting Colin Turner in his researches to flesh out Guild entries on Andrew Craddock’s PealBase database.
The Guild’s online archive has the minutes of the Guild Annual Meetings, 1973-2020, Executive Committee Meetings, 1980-2020, a huge collection of District Reports and a collection of historical articles from The Ringing World about Guild people, places and events. Accessible from the Guild website, these are housed at www.methods.org, Originally created by Tony Smith to provide online access to methods and Central Council method decisions, the site has subsequently been expanded to include a vast amount of archival material from the Guild, the Central Council and other national bodies. The site is maintained by Tony Smith: I am absolutely in awe of the range of material Tony has amassed, and I commend the site to your attention.
I am always pleased to assist Guild members and others with an interest in the Guild with their researches. I should like to thank my colleagues within the Guild and the Winchester Cathedral band for their continuing support.
| Income | Expenditure | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| £.p | £.p | ||
| Balance b/f | 97.38 | Sub. to The Ringing World | 85.00 |
| Sub. to the Friends of the Central Council Library | 10.00 | ||
| Balance c/f | 2.38 | ||
| £97.38 | £97.38 | ||
Bruce Purvis