As an ordinary ICOM member I must say the whole discussion about fees for conferences, travel costs for delegates vs reimbursement, sponsorship, reduced fees and democratic principles is quite interesting but also a bit difficult to follow from time to time. (without offences; the subject headers change from time to time but the content of contributions refers to one and the same subject it seems)

I understand that it is ICOM's role or mission in this perspective if you like, to get as many members as possible and to enable as many to participate in its committees and official boards and to attend meetings and conferences. Noble and well accepted.
Basically it all seems to be a financial problem either for any individual or institution or for ICOM itself to facilitate everyone, anywhere to get involved.

I wonder however if there are any estimates or maybe real figures or an assessment of the potential of 'new' members, the financial problems to become member, to attend meetings and conferences and to become board or committee member of any or all subcommittees and so on. Many examples have been mentioned so far but is this somehow quantified (maybe asking for the impossible...)?

Maybe ICOM should reconsider its policy to (more) actively recruit members where it is most easily done or most probable that financial constraints do not form a major roadblock. If I remember correct, the UK community present at the CIDOC/mda conference in London last September was addressed to become members all by stating that the ICOM membership in the UK was somewhat low. Again maybe, it would be possible to raise the income share from the more 'wealthy' countries (despite this might be perceived to be not very democratic either) to enable activities to be sponsored more easily to reduce for instance conferences fees if this would indeed facilitate or stimulate more people to attend.

However this might not be THE solution, more income could anyhow make it easier to reconsider bursaries, scholarships and so on (including extra overheads in administration).

Knowing that this would require some efforts to be spend on recruiting new members and might involve some PR, is this something to consider?

By the way, how is this all compared to for instance comparable organisations like ICA and IFLA? Any idea how they 'treat' their members in this respect?

Friso Visser
External expert to the European Commission
Information Society DG, Cultural Heritage Applications Unit D2


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