now no longer on the second floor of the Murray Road Car Park and last month some of the more important records were placed in a special room in the Central Government Offices West Wing and these are accessible to members of the public. The other records have been placed in Tuen Mun in, I believe, reasonable surroundings. However, more importantly it has been reported that the Government has agreed to build a special purpose building for Public Records in Kwun Tong. This is very good news even though the building is unlikely to be completed for another two or three years. I should again like to thank all those who helped in this campaign. One of the incidental results of the move of the Public Records is that the Society's stock of journals which were there (rather surreptitiously I may add) is now temporarily (I hope) stored in the library of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. And in this connection I hope you will have a good look and buy some of these back journals at the back of the room,
Publications, visits, lectures and other educational activities are the ingredients of the Society and what makes it move. However none of these can work well unless there is a satisfactory administration to back it up. The Society has been fortunate in the people who help in this direction. We have our Treasurer, Mr. Robert Nield, who helps us (even orders us!) to keep on the right financial track; he will tell us later that the Society's finances are in reasonable shape and we will not need to raise our subscriptions in January 1996, but may well need to do so in January 1997. Our Secretary, Mr. David Sheil keeps us in order at our Committee meetings and even from his Lamma outpost. Our Assistant Secretaries - you will note I have said Secretaries rather than Secretary, because we have had two in the last year. Mrs. Sharon Bruce who served in this capacity for eight years did a splendid job - her sympathetic listening and quiet efficiency served the Society extraordinarily well. Unfortunately she left in December and her position has been taken over by Mr. Martin Barnett. We welcome him; he promises to professionalise us, but not, I hasten to add, too much. He has already put our membership records on computer thereby giving us more information on the profile of our members than we ever had in the past.
Lastly, I think it would be useful to give some thought for the future. The Society by nature caters very much for the local amateur and professional academic interested in local affairs covering a wide range of interests, from political and social history, anthropological matters, archaeology, architecture, geography, and many other matters which stimulate the mind. This is how it should be. However, we cannot be
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