The Library Collections Agreement arrived at between the Board and the County Council was achieved after pressure from Members of the Committee and others calling for what they saw as necessary assessment of the value and contents of our possessions. In the event, no such requests proved achievable under the pressure of the removal timetable. Nevertheless, the Agreement, signed on 28 July 2010 and in many ways lacking precision, bears within it the undertaking that both parties, the Society and the County Council, will establish a negotiating body to ensure that its terms are carried out.
About a month after the Agreement was signed the Society's Honorary Librarian, Mrs Anne Nix, became ill. David Bromwich nobly volunteered to take her place one day a week so that the consequences of the move in terms of unpacking and shelving, and later of service to enquirers, could be carried out to some extent. Unpacking and shelving have by now been completed, and service to readers continues so far as possible; and two projects - the improvement of the storage of the Braikenridge Collection, and Volunteer Cataloguing - are under way, the first with financial support from the Heritage Service, the second from the Society.
The absence of the Honorary Librarian has seriously hampered the work of the Committee over the last few months, but that it has survived at all is due in no small measure to the persistence of its chairman, Dr Roy Haines, whose concern for the library is well known. He felt, however, that a deepening crisis over the future of Mrs Nix as our Honorary Librarian was likely to provoke more difficulties for the Society than he felt able to face. Dr Robert Dunning has therefore taken his place as an interim measure and is ably supported as Secretary by Dr Andrew Butcher in a move to ensure that the Society's library and associated collections receive the care and attention that is due.
To that end the Committee has left the Board in no doubt of its determination that a properly qualified and experienced librarian shall have care of this, the Society's hugely valuable asset; that repairs and conservation, adequate access, a satisfactory level of purchasing, and an academically-acceptable catalogue shall be its active aim.
The Society, through the Publications Committee, are also working on improved access to the Pridham Collection of drawings of Somerset church fonts. This is a large collection of drawings and descriptions of Somerset's ancient fonts principally made in the late nineteenth century by Harvey Pridham. More information will be announced as the project continues.
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