As we announced in January, the Partnership has launched a set of new Task Forces this year to address several of the items in our 2014 and ongoing program of work. After a period of allowing members to sign up for participation in the groups, the Task Forces have completed a round of initial meetings designed to discuss and establish specific goals to be addressed. As the work of the Task Forces continue, we hope to share progress and report on their work here.
The GSDP Archives and History Task Force was formed in response to member feedback after the 2014 Annual Banquet. As many of you know, during the Banquet, we were pleased to recognize many of our long-time members for their years of support of the Chamber of Commerce. During the course of compiling milestone records, we realized that many of our records are missing information.
In 1992 the Chamber adopted an online member management system called Chamber Master -- the same system we now use for creating member profiles, managing our event calendar and facilitating registration for Partnership member events. Many membership records prior to the implementation of Chamber Master are antiquated or incomplete. With changes in the GSDP Chamber Director position during that same time period, we realized the need to recover as much of that membership history as possible. After several members expressed an interest in helping with that process, a Task Force devoted to the job was formed.
The Archives and History Task Force held its initial meeting on Friday, March 27 with seven members convening along with Heath Barret, Partnership Director of Membership. Members of the Task Force include Nellah Taylor, David and Sherrie Van Landingham, Gary Allen, Nancy Walsh, Cory Lucious, and Stuart Vance.
After discussion, the Task Force developed a goal of creating a synopsis history of the Starkville Chamber of Commerce and membership that can be made available to Partnership staff and members as needed so that a record of membership history prior to online archiving can be preserved.
Nellah Taylor said she hoped to come out of the Task Force with a "synopsis of the history of the Chamber to make available to each new Chamber Director hire so that he or she will not have this problem in the future."
The Task Force members discussed a number of ways to obtain missing information, including contacting Past Presidents of the Chamber to glean oral history or documents they may have from their tenures serving in leadership positions. Members of the Task Force also agreed to search Starkville Daily News archives and Starkville Public Library holdings as sources of information. In addition, David and Sherrie Van Landingham agreed to provide old paper records that will be copied for research purposes.
The Partnership is grateful to the Task Force members for their willingness to dig through these multiple sources to compile more accurate records. Some of our long-time members may be contacted by volunteers about obtaining additional information. If any of our members have records you feel would be useful, please contact Heath Barrett at the Partnership office.
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