ALHS Secretary's Report for 2001

Secretary's Report for 2000/2001

All in all, 2000/2001 was a successful year for the Society.

Historical Material Donated

Our planning for activities including the Seminar on September 14 and exhibition has meant that members and others have donated a great deal of historical material to the Society. Around 350 photographs, as well as number press clippings, journal articles and short biographical pieces have been collected.

It was not the original intention of the Board to be a collecting agency. We had envisaged that complete sets of papers would be donated to public institutions such as the State Library. However, over the last year of so, we have been receiving a steady stream of material that though not relevant to an "Archive" as such, none the less is important in documenting the history of the settlement of the Lebanese in Australia.

Rather than just accumulate this material in a box, it has been copied and filed in subject and family name order so that it can be retrieved.

Some photographs and their copies have been left with the Society, while others have been loaned for short periods. I have scanned photographs and they are stored on a CD-Rom which can be added to or duplicated, thus ensuring the images are not lost.

A challenge for the Society is to develop a strategy whereby this material can be made available to members and historical researchers - for instance locating a collecting institution that will hold the material for reference use.

Newsletter on Public Record

We have produced 6 Newsletters in all. As promised we have produced four over the last year.

The aim has been to include historical material as well as news of Society events. I have ensured that the Newsletter has been deposited in the permanent collection of the State Library of New South Wales and is available through their catalogue. Rockdale City Library, which caters for a large Lebanese clientele, also collects our Newsletter for public reference. Thus information in the Newsletter, including historical material will join the public record. This is important - since the Lebanese community has produced many publications in the past - almost all of them were not deposited with a collecting organization and the information in them has been lost to the public record.

Homepage Up and Running

I am also happy to report that the Society's Homepage is once again up and running along with an easy to remember domain name (www.alhs.org.au) and our domain email address (mail@alhs.org.au). There have been times when I have despaired of achieving this goal, through a number of factors beyond our control. We originally had the homepage running at the beginning, only to be stymied by the collapse of OneTel who was our ISP. With a new ISP the homepage was running again, only to be lost due to a dispute between various domain registration authorities. These problems are now out of the way and the homepage can grow to serve some of the needs of members, especially those located beyond Sydney. I'd like to see more work on its development to make as interactive as possible.

Membership

Our membership continues to grow. At the 30th June 2000 we had 54 financial members. At 30th June 2001 we had 74 financial members.

We reached a peak of 90 financial members at the end of September 2001. With the formal renewal period now completed we have 61 financial members (a little down on the 64 for the same period last year) yet I expect a number of members who have not yet renewed to eventually do so over the next month or so.

Our experience is that we gain new members as we undertake activities, and I expect the membership to grow further over the next year.

Board Meeting Attendance.

One of the statutory requirements of a Secretary of an incorporated Society is to report on attendance at Board Meetings, which is a follows, which shows that your Board operated fully and continuously throughout the year:

Board Member	Possible Attendances	Attendances	Leave of Absences Granted
Freda Backes	5	5	-
Allissar Chidiac	5	3	1
Paul Convy	5	5	-
Edmund Joseph	5	5	-
John Koorey	5	5	-
Lillian Melick	5	5	-
Margaret Poole	5	3	-
Peter Shehadie	5	3	1

Conclusion

The year has been a success for the Society culminating in the very successful seminar at State Records on September 14 2001 (which really falls under the scrutiny of the year 2001/2002).

We are in a healthy financial position with the resources needed to undertake a worthwhile program for the year. We have a balance at bank of $4815.6 compared with $3896.40 at the same time last year.

I feel that we need to spend the next year consolidating by continuing and strengthening our communication with members (for example, the Newsletter and Homepage) encouraging more participation by members of the Society to discover more of the history of the settlement of Lebanese in this country.

Paul Convy
21st November 2001.

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