Society Open Days
are a wonderful way of advertising family history
as a whole and meeting people with interests in
Berkshire families, so we were looking forward to
Open Day 2001 with some excitement. As organisers
of the Abingdon Open Day this was our bird's-eye-view.
It all happened
at Larkmead Sclool on Saturday May 19. More than
400 people signed in, but we know that many
couples turned up so the final figure must have
exceeded 500. Three came from Australia, one from
New Zealand; as well as British visitors from as
far away as Leigh on Sea, Poultoi-le-Fylde and
Exeter. We hope they all thoroughly enjoyed
themselves. One Abingdon visitor who came into
the main exhibition hall could hardly believe the
buzz around the stalls. 'Are all these people
interested in family history?', he asked.
Visitors
around the BFHS stall
The morning
started with an early rise for our stallholders
and a slightly later rise for the organisers. We
arrived at the hall at 8am - detailed planning in
the months before and on the previous evening
guaranteed us an effortless start to the day.
Soon the stallholders started arriving, setting
up with a reasonable lack of fuss. However, we
were rather put out by the lack of good manners
by two exhibitors who decided not to come and
failed to let us know. There were bookstalls from
neighbouring and distant county family history
societies, several commercial organisations, a
Help Desk and about ten computers, two of them on-line
all day, manned by volunteers. We were fortunate
in having representatives from the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who were able
to demonstrate the IGI. The Society Webmaster
ensured that we had excellent publicity with a
map of the School that was greatly appreciated by
many visitors who came from long distances. We
also widely published details on many Rootsweb
Mailing Lists, together with the Society's web
page, newspapers and magazines, radio stations
and leaflets put up around the town.
The
Latter Day Saints' display of the IGI
At the end of the
day, our Branch had increased its membership and
many others joined the Society. We now look
forward to the next Open Day in our area.
