A is for AFFHO #AtoZChallenge

 

Welcome to my first post for the A-Z Challenge!

My theme for the month of April will be Family History Societies. 

What does it take to run one?  What do they do?  Who is in a Society and why? What kind of societies are there?  Are Societies relevant in this day and age?  

What is the A-Z blogging challenge? Well you can find out more about it here.

Basically you pick a theme or meme and blog about it for 26 days in April, the idea being you can have every Sunday off to recover :)  There are all sorts of blogs out there - history, books, health, musing, genealogy.  You name it, there's a blog about the topic you're interested in.  

My blog here is about family history and genealogy and there's a few of us in blogland who will be participating, including some of my genea-buddies blogging about anything from the Australian Joint Copying Project to whether oral histories can be trusted sources of information.  All good fun.  Enjoy the challenge whatever you blog or read about! 

And so to the first letter of the challenge.  

A. A is for AFFHO which stands for Australian Federaton of Family History Organisations. 

You can find out all about AFFHO here. 

I've blogged about AFFHO several times over the years - usually to do with attending Congress which they hold every three years.  I attended the one in Canberra in 2015 (where I was presented with my blogger beads) and the one in Sydney in 2018.   The next Congress will be held on Norfolk Island - how lovely.  As I am not in paid employment at the moment and living on a tight budget, I won't be able to attend - sob!  One day I would love to get to Norfolk and or Lord Howe Island.  They both look beautiful.  Don't know where Norfolk Island is?

Now you've got an idea :)  And there's more information on this website here.

But enough about Norfolk.  This post is meant to be about AFFHO.  

AFFHO is also responsible for hosting and organising National Family History Month in August every year.  It's a great opportunity to see what resources there are out there in the community and there's usually a stack of prizes to be won as well.

AFFHO also presents the Nick Vine Hall Award for journals published by member societies in Australia and New Zealand.  The Queensland Family History Society, of which I am a member, publishes a journal called the Queensland Family Historian and it came 2nd in Category B (for societies with more than 500 members) in 2020.  

AFFHO also presents awards to individuals for meritorious service to Family History.  You can find a list of them here. 

So can you join AFFHO as an individual? No.  Membership is only open to family history societies in the region. Your Society can join as an Associate if it is outside the region but has an interest in the area. You can view the members list here. 

AFFHO has a Code of Ethics for Family Historians which is always worth reminding ourselves of and can be found here.  It bears repeating:

Responsible family historians respect the law and the feelings of others and will always:

• Seek by all reasonably available means to inform themselves about the legal principles in force from time to time governing the protection of copyright and of personal privacy;
  

• Observe the legal rights of copyright owners, by copying or distributing any part of their works only with their permission, or to the extent allowed under the copyright law’s fair use provisions;

•  Be sensitive to the hurt that revelations of criminal, immoral, bizarre or irresponsible behaviour may bring to family members;

• Obtain specific consent from living people that they are agreeable to further sharing of information of themselves;

•  Inform people who provide information about their families of the ways it may be used, carefully recording and observing any conditions they may impose about the use of it; and,

• Recognize that legal rights of privacy may limit the extent to which information from publicly available sources may be further used, disseminated or published.

So now you know all about AFFHO! 

Are you going to Congress?  Have you ever been to Norfolk Island?  

Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to comment.  If you are participating, all the best with the challenge!