RUMCars Forum
General Category => Microcar News => Topic started by: Chris Thomas on January 15, 2017, 12:07:28 PM
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Dear Rumcar Forum followers.
For the last year or so, Rumcar has been raising the issue of what needs to be done with the large archive of documents that have been collected and donated to Rumcar since 1984. Many suggestions have been made and considered.
In the background small donations have been growing. In July 2016, at the Hammond collection Open Day, some of the proceeds were collected for the Archive project. in September, books and Calendars were sold at the National, and are still for sale. In December a major request for donations was put out in Rumcar news.
I am please to inform you all that through the generous contributions and donations the Archive fund stands at almost £5200. Thank you everybody who has donated what they could to the Project. I must give the biggest thank you to Jeff Lane, who has donated by far the largest amount, that has kicked off the New Year with a Bang. Jeff Lane is the founder of the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, USA. and for those of you that do not follow microcars in the USA, his microcar collection is large. I am not sure if it is the largest in the USA, but it is one of the best, if not the best in the USA.
With secure funding from Jeff Lane and all, we can start the process of turning the Rumcar organisation into a Charitable Trust, to secure the long term existence of the organisation and the archive. After that first step we will begin the process of purchasing a suitable secure storage facility into which the documents can be transferred from the nooks and cupboards of the Hammond home, where they are now. Then the hard work of logging each and every document and scanning it into a digital form for electronic back up storage, so that eventually we can allow access to the archive via a new web site.
You will appreciate that at our best guess we have over half a million pages of documentation, which is growing every week. The space needed and the equipment needed, and the man power needed to complete this project will need more than we have at present and will need money to buy. What we have will set us going along this path that we should have started perhaps 10 years ago. We will also need people willing to become Trustees and Archivists to keep the finished project alive. This is a long term commitment.
Please remember the faster donations and funds can be collected. The quicker we can progress this project. Without your help, rare documents may never become readily accessible, as they should be. We have set up a special Rumcar Archive account to allow funds to be paid straight in. If you wish to do so please contact me (Chris Thomas), Jean Hammond, or Alastair Lauchland, for more details.
Jeff Lane, for his Generous donation is the first name in our Rumcar Archive Hall of Fame. Please keep him company.
Chris Thomas
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I can only endorse with my personal thanks to Jeff Lane for his most generous kick start to our project. However, I cannot emphasise enough that we need not only funds and fund raisers, but expertise in so many fields, like setting up and then running a Charitable Trust, knowledge of applying for grants, sourcing portable buildings and computer expertise of any kind. So if any of you are prepared to offer us any help of any kind we will be so pleased to hear from you.
It is a daunting task, but hey so was building the Museum in 2002 ! That was achieved thanks to the so many people helping in all kinds of ways all working together to make it happen. Can we do it? Yes we can! Jean