Dear All:

You may be interested to know that the FIBIS Autumn Open Meeting this year is to be held on Saturday afternoon, 7th November, 2009 at Friends House,173, Euston Road in London (Directly opposite the front entrance of Euston Main Line Railway Station). We shall assemble from 1.00 p.m. for our Annual General Meeting which is to start at 1.30 p.m. (Non-members may be present as observers) This will be followed by two lectures:

1. “Medals for Service in India” by Allan Stanistreet, FIBIS Member and Collector of Medals
2. “Getting the Best out of the FIBIS Website”. FIBIS Web-master, Valmay Young, will co-ordinate and introduce a series of short presentations on the various sources of data available on the different parts of our web-site. Presenters will include a number of Valmay’s team of supporters, each of whom is involved in differing areas of our web-site, viz:
a. The searchable data bases. This has grown to include over 600,000 lines of spreadsheet data, some 800 images (Ships, Churches, Gravestones, etc) , a number of searchable prose extracts and audio reminiscences of life in India.
b. A number of pod-casts, plus video broadcasts linked to You-tube
c. An R.S.S. Facility to keep subscribers up-to-date with events
d. a link to our presence on Twitter e. The rapidly growing FiBiWiKi with special features designed to provide background to the lives led by Ancestors in British India. These include:
*Indian Railways *Battles & Campaigns *Orphans & Orphanages *Apothecaries *plus links to Maps, Directories and relevant Google Books

Visitors will be invited to make suggestions as to how to improve our site.

**Please note that, for the second year running, the FIBIS web-site been given an award by the Federation of Family History Societies! Our meeting is free and open to all – **on condition that they confirm that their intention to come to FIBIS Membership Secretary, Emma Sullivan at Membership@fibis.org by Sunday 1st November.** We very much regret that we are unable to accept persons who have not booked a place and, since our meetings are getting close to capacity at Friends House, we may have to give priority to FIBIS Members wishing to attend the AGM.

Good Hunting!
Peter Bailey, Chairman
Families in British India Society
www.fibis.org