Seán O’Reilly, IHBC Director, has announced the launch of a ‘beta’ or test version of a new on-line database of the IHBC’s NewsBlog features, which can be found at
http://www.ihbc.biz/News_Archive/IHBC_NewsBlog_Archive/Archive.html
Seán O’Reilly said: “This is a substantial development of the IHBC’s hugely popular NewsBlog service, and brings it far beyond the simple members’ news service developed in 2007. That NewsBlog, with the e-mail alerts, has now evolved into a unique and invaluable resource for the sector, keeping nearly 2000 members and friends of the IHBC up to date on current issues across and beyond the UK. It has helped define our membership as well as support it.
Now, by making our NewsBlogs available to the general public as an on-line database, people will be able to explore issues with much greater ease than ever before, as well as refer someone directly to any NewsBlog item, however old it is.
There are limitations too, however. The links to other sites often will lead to pages that have been archived or taken down, and there’s nothing we can do about that. This, though, makes our NewsBlog database all the more important, as anyone can explore the background to recent conservation issues most easily by just going to our database. Users must also remember that the NewsBlog is not an all-encompassing news history; it is only the IHBC’s own distillation of what’s happening.
Our superb web managers, Peter Badcock and Joanna Theobald, are working hard on making the on-line database as useful a tool as possible for our members and the wider public, so already you can search by date, title and keyword, but clearly there’s a long way to go yet. In the spirit of voluntary contributions that lies at the heart of the IHBC’s operations, we’re keen for people to tell us what they think of this Beta version, so please feed back any comments to me direct at director@ihbc.org.uk .”
