By Mike Smith

The NHM website will be “upgraded” in the near future as we have just about reached the capacity of the old one. Under the direction of our new Webmaster, Allan Jobling, and our Publicity Officer, Mike Haymonds, we are hopeful of significantly increasing the potential to share information and to keep the hockey world informed of what we are doing

The weekly “Hockive Fact” is being reinstated so that we can share with you some of the interesting and amazing pieces of information that we come across as we trawl through the material that we have and that arrives every week. In the museum these are often referred to as “wow moments”. One of us will be going through a collection and will actually say “Wow, look at this”. Rarely does a week go by that we don’t come up with something.

As part of the re-launch of our website we will be introducing a new feature – “Hockey in 50 Objects”. We hope to find 50 objects that have helped to make hockey the great sport it is today. This will be a regular feature and we have identified quite a number already. However we would like your input into what items or occurrences had a big impact on hockey to help make it the game it is today. For instance, the introduction of the circle, the use of short headed (Indian) sticks and the change in playing surfaces from grass to artificial turf are three clearly pivotal points in hockey’s development. Please drop us an email if you have any ideas.

The third idea is a well tried series of 50 or 100 years ago this week. Thankfully, we can do a weekly series as all those years ago 1914 & 1964 hockey magazines were weekly publications. They say technology has moved and yet today there is only one magazine, which appears six times a year!

February 2014