When this project was undertaken our mission stated:

            "We are invested in creating an organized resource for fly tyers, historians and researchers as well as preserving our distinct fly tying heritage. This project will involve examining the feasibility, practicality and production of a digitized archive of The Federation of Fly Fishers' historic fly collection. Data will include digital photographs and recipes for the flies as well as pertinent  background information about each fly. "

Progress to this point has involved selecting twelve people to examine and catalog the flies retrieved from the FFF Discovery Center upon its closure last year. Some flies are also currently displayed at the FFF national office, while a small portion of the fly collection is on loan for display in a university setting. Each member of the Archive Project is linked through a Yahoo Group. The Yahoo Group is used for communication and  hosts our data base. The data base will work in the following way: each member has received a selection of the flies to be archived, each member will receive a prefix number, as individuals in the group go through the selection of flies that they were given they will attach a code number that begins with their prefix. For example if Bob Flyfisher is assigned 12000 as a code number, the first fly Bob records data on will be given the number 12001, the second will become number 12002 and so on. The data base will contain cells for fly number, name, tyer, fly type, date tyed, reason tyed and future pictures. The data base construction is underway and members will begin entering data during the last week of February. This is Phase One of the Archive Project. The estimated completion data for this is June 1, 2010.

Phase Two will involve reviewing the collected data and restoring and photographing flies appropriate for the Archive. “Appropriateness” will be based on the condition of the fly, the amount of data available on the fly, uniqueness and other criteria that the group deems appropriate.