Preserving Your Club’s and TFRW’s History

By Dot Adler, TFRW Historian

            TFRW encourages each local club to appoint a historian to preserve newsletters, photos, newspaper clippings, NFRW and TFRW award certificates, rosters and yearbooks, invitations, printed programs, noteworthy correspondence, accounts of the club’s history and other memorabilia documenting the club’s activities and achievements.

            This historical material becomes increasingly valuable over time, as clubs celebrate anniversaries and need accurate information about the club and the members who led the club in past years.

Date & ID What You Save

            When saving historical material, always write a date on it. When saving a newspaper clipping, be sure the publication name is included.

            All photos must be identified. Therefore, when taking photos at an event, carry a small notebook and write down the name of each person you photograph, the date and the event. Never assume that someone else can look at a photo later and identify who’s in it or when and where it was taken.

            When saving photos, include the full name of everyone whose face is recognizable, the event where the photo was taken and the date. Don’t write the identification directly on the photo. Instead, write or type the identification on paper and tape this to the photo (or put the ID under the photo in a scrapbook). If saving several photos from an event, put numbers on the photos and list the photos by number with their identification on a page with the photos.

What TFRW Needs for Archives

            Photos (prints) and newspaper articles about TFRW and its events are needed for the TFRW historical archives. TFRW board members and club presidents are urged to send the TFRW historian copies of newspaper articles and photos from TFRW Immediate Past President Borah Van Dormolen’s visits to clubs in the last two years and from President Toni Anne Dashiell’s visits in 2008 and 2009.

            Also, we want fully identified photos taken at TFRW events — the Tribute to Women, Legislative Day, board meetings, the NFRW and TFRW conventions, etc.

            Please send archival material to Dot Adler at dadler@tx.rr.com.