Colleagues The next meeting of the Oxfordshire Family History Society will take place on Monday 24 September 2012. It will be held at the usual venue at Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1AB. Doors open at 7.15pm for coffee, help with both genealogy and computers, and the bookstall. The subject of the talk at 8.00pm is "Counting the people : census returns online", which will be presented by Dave Annal. The latter has been involved in the world of family history research for over thirty years. He began researching his own family history in 1977, and has worked as a professional researcher since 1984. He spent eleven years working for The National Archives, where he was appointed to the post of Senior Family History Specialist. He has written a number of books on a variety of family history topics, and is a regular contributor to "Your Family History" magazine as one of the regular panel of experts. A census of England and Wales has been taken every ten years since 1801, and the surviving records now form one of family history’s key resources. The schedules for the years 1841 to 1911 are now easily accessible online, but finding our ancestors is not always as easy as we like. Based on more than thirty years experience of working with census returns, Dave Annal will introduce some essential techniques for searching online databases, and will provide some vital clues to help you track down your elusive ancestors. All members, potential members and their guests are welcome. For directions as to how to get to the Exeter Hall, please see :- http://www.ofhs.org.uk/ExeterHall.html For a list of future OFHS meetings, please see :- http://www.ofhs.org.uk/meetings.html Any queries, please contact me. Paul Gaskell Publicity Officer Oxfordshire Family History Society www.ofhs.org.uk