TO MAKE A CHANGE from the usual Shoreline page, I have asked Linda Grainger, one of my assistants, to write about the work of herself and her colleagues.

First of all, however, I am pleased to announce that RNLB Shoreline has been allocated to Blyth, a station on the north east coast of England established in 1826. We shall have a great deal to tell you about Blyth as time goes by.

And, before I hand over to Linda, 66 new members were signed on at Bristol Boat Show in April—well done!— PETER HOLNESS, membership secretary, RNLI, West Quav Road, Poole, Dorset, BH15 I HZ (Tel. Poole 71133).

No doubt you remember that, in the spring 1978 journal, mention was made of the fact that Shoreline members are now enrolled straight on to computer from head office. Well, I am one of a merry band of six girls who are responsible for seeing that all new applications for membership are dealt with without delay and with the greatest ease. We also deal with membership renewals, insignia orders, our members' correspondence and a great many other aspects of the membership scheme.

You may ask yourself how six girls and a supervisor are able to keep their heads above water with the membership figure currently standing at 47,000 and rising! Well, up to June 1977 all the work was dealt with manually on a monthly basis. Everything was written down and sent to a centre in Croydon, where it was processed on computers —and, believe me, the end of the monthly 'run', as it was called, left us all breathless. We would have a few days break in between the work going to Croydon and it being returned to be sorted and filed, during which we would deal with work which was considered less urgent—queries and insignia orders, for example—but which was nonetheless important. Inevitably delays occurred which often resulted in additional correspondence . . . .

When in June the computer visual display units (VDU) were installed in the Shoreline office, we set about learning how to operate them and tried to find the best way to handle the work load in order to achieve the smoothest possible running of the office. We seemed to be everlastingly reorganising and reallocating the work and it was some months before we began to see any real change for the better.

We are now divided into sections.

Two membership clerks, Christine and Marianne, receive the paperwork from our accounts office. They sort it out into new members and renewals and pass it over to the VDU operators, another Linda and myself. The membership clerks also deal with all the correspondence regarding subscriptions which are paid through the bank. They are responsible, too, for sending out membership cards together with any insignia which may have been ordered.

The VDU operators process membership forms on the computer and make any necessary amendments for existing members; for example, changes of address or increased subscriptions.

The work is then passed to Peggy, our correspondence clerk who, besides being second to none at deciphering signatures, is happy to answer any of our members enquiries.

Lastly, but by no means least, we have Carol, our covenant clerk, who deals with no less than 16,000 covenanted subscriptions. Watching her at work I feel sure she would quite happily deal with 50,000 covenants, so it seems a great pity that more subscriptions are not convenanted as, besides the extra benefit this would bring into Shoreline, we all wonder continued on page 32.