The IJBS has now a public Facebook page that you will find at: https://www.facebook.com/johnbunyansociety

This page will enhance public awareness of the Society. You can Like it and promote it in anyway you think fit.

In parallel, our Facebook group is still running; we now have over 70 members from all parts of the world. Should you want to become a member of the group, please contact our Vice President, David Gay, dgay@ualberta.ca.

This time last year the IJBS Executive Committee set itself some ‘challenges’ for 2014, most of which (though not all!) have been met:

• the first was to redesign The Recorder, which appeared last June for the first time in a magnificent electronic edition supervised by Nathalie Collé-Bak, now available to download;
• the IJBS was beginning to suffer from the lack of a constitution and bye-laws. With the best of current practice in mind, and working from David Gay’s account of the role of the officers, the Executive Committee produced a new set of documents, overseen by our past Presidents, which are now also available on this site;
• in December 2013, the possibility of a meeting at Harlington Manor was a mere glint in our eyes. Thanks to the diligence of General Secretary Bob Owens, and to the hospitality of the Blakeman family, it became a reality on 23 May 2014. As you will see below, such meetings are now a feature of IJBS;
• finally, David Parry revised and updated one of our major resources, the online and fully-searchable Bunyan Bibliography, adding 167 new references for the period 2010 to 2014.

We had promised you that this site would be revamped, and in particular that the addition of payment buttons would allow you to renew your membership online. This has not yet been accomplished due to delays beyond the control of the Executive Committee, but we are now back on track and, as I write, ‘e-commerce’ solutions are being put in place. We are confident that you will soon be able to renew your subscription online. As this is put into operation, you may experience some small disruptions to the website in the next few weeks.

 Other developments, we had not fully anticipated :

• following the regional Harlington meeting in 2014, an IJBS one-day conference has now been set up by David Walker and Bob Owens. This will take place on 10 April 2015 at the University of Bedfordshire. Many thanks to our two officers for organising this day, which promises to be a great success and a good opportunity for our members to meet again. You can download the call for papers here. Please do not forget to register to attend;
• we have instituted two new kinds of membership: an Institutional Membership for libraries, and an Honorary Membership. In November 2014, Stanley Fish, Isabel Rivers, Terry Waite and David Wykes accepted to become the first Honorary Members of the IJBS. From 2016 our members will be able to nominate personalities who will be voted on at the AGM;
• IJBS publicity leaflets have been prepared by our General Secretary and members should all have received some copies. Please distribute them as you see fit as they are a good way of increasing the visibility of the Society;
• finally, although we knew that the Aix 2016 conference was shaping up, little did we know that we would be the recipients of a major private donation that would allow young researchers to join us (see the Post below). At this festive season, let us thank our anonymous benefactor.

May I also take this opportunity to announce that four wonderful scholars have accepted to give plenaries at the 2016 conference : Alec Ryrie (Durham), Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes), Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge) and Helen Wilcox (Bangor). We look forward to welcoming them in Aix. The call for papers will be out in January, so watch this space.

In the coming year, your Executive Committee will do its utmost to ensure new benefits for the IJBS. There will be the Bedford day-conference, another issue of The Recorder, preparations for Aix 2016 will mature, and this site should offer the opportunity to renew membership online. As I urged you last spring in The Recorder, please do not hesitate to get in touch to suggest new ideas, propose directions in which you think IJBS should develop in the near future and ponder opportunities for regional meetings.

None of this could have been achieved without the time and dedication of the IJBS officers: Nathalie Collé-Bak, David Gay, Galen Johnson, Bob Owens and David Walker.

 Wherever you are, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,

 Anne Page, Aix-Marseille Université