ANNUAL APPEAL to benefit the Institute of Historical Research

From the Membership Secretary

Prof. Paul Hammer
Department of History
University of Colorado at Boulder
234 UCB Hellems, Room 204
Boulder, CO 80309-0234

• Please consider making an annual tax-deductible (U.S.A.) contribution for the benefit of the Institute of Historical Research.
• A contribution of $45.00 or more provides standing as a regular individual member of the Institute to U.S.-resident donors.
  • A contribution of $30.00 annually provides similar standing for graduate students
  • And, as an option open only to American Friends of the IHR, for an additional $30.00, members may opt to have full access to the rich array of resources of the IHR's British History Online (as explained on the contribution form).
• Checks and forms should be returned to Prof. Hammer (use address on tax deductible contribution form) in order to maintain an updated list of contributors and addresses (checks will be sent on to our treasurer).

From the President of the AFIHR

President's Report to the Membership

December 2011 (updated March 2012)

Sears McGee
President, AFIHR,
Department of History,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410

Previous Reports

At the NACBS conference in Denver (Nov. 19-21), Jason Kelly and I organized and co-chaired an informational semi-plenary session designed to introduce scholars (especially younger ones) to the services on offer from a group of research organizations. It was part of the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the IHR and intended in part to encourage attendees to consider joining the AFIHR. Our panel members were from the IHR (Miles Taylor), the Huntington Library (Steve Hindle), the Folger Library (Kathleen Lynch), the Walpole Library (Maggie Powell), the Beinecke Library (Kathryn James), the W.A. Clark Library at UCLA (Rebecca Fenning), and the Ransom Center at UT-Austin (Rich Oram). After brief remarks from them, a lively Q & A session followed with questions and comments from a large audience.

At our board meeting, Professor Miles Taylor, the IHR director, encouraged us to inform AFIHR members that the IHR’s magazine (entitled Past and Future) is available on-line and provides us all an excellent means of keeping up with what is happening there. He also discussed the IHR’s temporary move to the South Block of the Senate House while the old quarters in the north block are being refurbished. We were pleased to hear the seminar program continues to thrive and that a number of the seminars are being made available as podcasts and in some cases webcasts that we can have direct access to in our offices, homes, or classrooms. [You may now register for free for notice of new podcasts at History SPOT.] As always, we also decided how to allocate the funds that you, our members, contributed, and the result was grants for library purchases ($3500), digitization projects ($3000), bursaries to support participation by graduate students from North America in the summer History Lab conference at the IHR ($2000), and this year’s Anglo-American Conference ($1000) [you may now register for Ancients and Moderns: the 81st Anglo-American Conference of Historians]. We thanked board member Nancy Ellenberger for many years of service as our membership secretary. This important task will now be performed by a new board member, Paul Hammer (University of Colorado).

I am also pleased to announce that we will be announcing a means by which AFIHR members can obtain a discount of approximately two thirds on an individual subscription to the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). Formerly available free from the Royal Historical Society, this important and ever growing database is currently provided by Brepolis to subscribing libraries or individual subscribers (currently ₤110). I expect to be able to give full details in my June message to you all. Please note that the individual subscriptions will be for the calendar year beginning January and that the IHR will be supplying its list of subscribers to Brepolis in November. I am most grateful to Miles Taylor and his colleagues at the IHR for helping us create this valuable option.  Information about it will also be posted on the AFIHR website and described in more detail in my spring newsletter.  

Please renew your membership in the AFIHR so we can continue to support the work of the IHR from this side of the Atlantic. More information is available elsewhere on this website, and we remain grateful to Newton Key for his excellent work as our webmaster. A contribution $45 or more annually to the American Friends of the IHR ($30 for graduate students) confers membership in the Institute and facilitates the creation or updating of a personal "swipe" card at the reception desk. All officers and board members of the AFIHR serve without compensation. Administrative costs are minimal, consisting of mailing expenses, occasional technical services, and accounting fees. Therefore nearly every dollar contributed is forwarded to the Institute in order to help pay for some aspect of its work. As you may observe (above), checks are to be sent to Professor Paul Hammer, so that he can keep our membership list up to date. He will forward all checks to our treasurer, Bill Lubenow. Thank you for your past support.

Sincerely yours,

Sears McGee