I SUPPORT the excellent job done by our award-winning museum service. Weston has had a museum service since 1901 and it was expanded to cover North Somerset. Regarding

I SUPPORT the excellent job done by our award-winning museum service.Weston has had a museum service since 1901 and it was expanded to cover North Somerset. Regarding 'being too centric', as the largest town and administration headquarters of the district it seems the obvious place for Weston to house the museum and I would fully support any expansion of the service to provide touring exhibitions around the area.Society has no future without respect for its past and even though more and more information is now available on places like the 'web' it's essential that access to real items are still available as a resource for students and local historians, etc, and the general public. The curatorial role of local artefacts is an important part of our responsibility to our heritage whether they are from the Iron Age or the 1940s.Many items such as fabrics need special care with controlled humidity and light levels, etc, and these are all included in guidelines from the Government's Museum, Libraries and Archives Council which all registered museums have to comply with. These items aren't suited to a lot of travelling. Many of the exhibits over the decades have been donated to the museum or acquired with grant aid and the guidelines state they should not be treated as disposable assets used to generate income. Bristol's Industrial and Somerset County Museum are both undergoing refurbishment funded by the lottery and they are likely to concentrate on their respective areas and not want to take over care of many of Weston's items.In Somerset there are scores of museums with even the smallest towns striving for their own. We should support our museum with Nailsea as the prime candidate for local displays on the glassworks and coalfields.J L TRENCHARD - Colombo Crescent, Weston