The George Williams Memorial Library is located in the ringing chamber of Winchester Cathedral and is available for readers and borrowers by appointment. The system for loans provides a standard loan period of eight weeks with a liberal renewal policy for serious research and special problems. The only exceptions are the archive material and the Guild’s annual and triennial reports for which, because of their unique importance, loans are solely at the discretion of the librarian. A catalogue of the printed books and of the complete archive is maintained on the Guild website. Part of our collection of archive material, held at the Hampshire Record Office in Sussex Street, Winchester, is available for consultation only. The collection there has the call-number 20M94.
The year’s first major acquisition was the gift of the great bulk of Rex Corke’s library by his widow Helen, comprising over fifty volumes on all aspects of bells and ringing and ranging in date from the great nineteenth-century classics to the Central Council’s Collection of Grandsire Compositions published in 2004 but now out of print. In addition there were Rex’s ringing records and notebooks, and a collection of gramophone records, both LPs and 78s. From the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral we received volumes originally from the Red House Museum in Christchurch, including first editions of Walters’ The Church Bells of England and Stahlschmidt’s Surrey Bells and London Bell-Founders. Finally, Anne Strong gave to us David’s 38-year run of The Ringing World, in binders up to 2012, and I plan to continue using this method of storing and presenting successive volumes.
My buying this year has been confined to the latest volume of Steve Coleman’s Companions, that on Ringing in History, which nicely complements the Central Council’s own three-volume history and the Friends of the CC Library’s collections of newspaper extracts.
The Guild’s online archive has the minutes of the Guild Annual meetings and Executive Committee meetings from 1980 to 2000 (More recent minutes are already available from the Guild’s Document Repository) and a collection of historical articles from The Ringing World about Guild people, places and events.
I am always pleased to assist Guild members and others with an interest in the Guild with their researches.
I should like to thank my colleagues within the Guild and the Winchester Cathedral band for their continuing support.
| Income | Expenditure | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| £.p | £.p | ||
| Balance b/f | 224.81 | Sub. to The Ringing World | 65.00 |
| Sub. to The Friends of the Central Council Library | 10.00 | ||
| Coleman: Ringing in History Comp. | 11.25 | ||
| Travel costs | 45.00 | ||
| Balance c/f | 93.56 | ||
| £224.81 | £224.81 | ||
Bruce Purvis