Message from the President 2009

I hope that members will be excited about the 'new look' website that Elaine Shaughnessy and Sina Bahrami have spent a lot of time and effort constructing for us. We wanted the new site to be eye-catching and they have certainly achieved that, together with John Stone who designed it for us. 

I should also like to thank the Linnean Society of London and Professor Hugh Torrens for making the main images available for our use. You will note too that we now have a consistent 'corporate look' between the website and our newly-designed Newsletter.  I should also like to thank Julia Bruce for her work on the Newsletter re-design.

We hope that you will find the new website more user-friendly that the old one and that all our e-mail woes of the past year have now been put behind us.  We encourage all of you to send in your comments on these developments.  Your Council is keen that the Society serves your needs in the most efficient, attractive and interactive way.  

The support of members past has made the Society what it is today.  Now we look to the future and hope that our new look will make it easier to recruit new members to our ranks.  The Society for the History of Natural History has a deservedly high academic reputation for its standard of scholarship but we are no rarefied elite. 

The Society also values highly its reputation for being open and friendly to all with an interest in its area of interest.  That we are not content rest on our laurels, I hope, is evidenced by these new initiatives.  To those who are not already members, I say, join us and let's make SHNH even better than the world beater it already is.

Geoff Moore
President
December 2009