On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Friso Visser wrote:

+++++ [CLIP 1] +++++

> 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.

REPLY:

As a minimum, to serve as Chairperson of an International Committee, you
must have the financial resources - either personal or from your
institution or government to travel to:

--  two General Conferences across the world within your three year period
    of office

--  two other meetings of your own Committee across the world during your
    three years in office

--  two meetings of the Advisory Committee and Executive Council in Paris
    during your three years in office.

Obviously the costs of these will depend on your location, taking into
account that the General Conferences and International Committee meetings
seems generally to alternative between Europe and non-Europe locations.

In addition, you (or your sponsor) will have to cover telephone, fax,
e-mail charges and probably most of the costs of stationary, postage etc.

The chair of a medium-sized international committee who is based in a
major European capital would need to spend at least US $10,000 of personal
or institutional money in a typical three year period to cover this; for
someone in a more remote part of the world in relation to meeting places
the cost could easily be at least 50% more.

Equally, however, if ICOM was to pay for all this centrally the cost would
be around $100,000 a year - and would require a 40 Euro (approx. $7)
increase in ICOM's basic membership fee.

========================

+++++ [CLIP -2] +++++

> 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?

REPLY:

Both IFLA (Libraries) and ICA (Archives) remain what I would term
"traditional" Non-Governmental Oranisations s - i.e. they are largely or
entirely international federations of official or semi-official national
representatives, who - as official delegates - are funded by national
governments or national organisations or institutions.  (They are not
generally funded by IFLA or ICA).

Until 1974 ICOM was structured in the same way, with a legal maximum of 15
members in each national committee  (and around 800 "full" members - and
with a limit of 30 in each international committee, with not more than two
from each country).

In 1974, however, ICOM was re-structured as a "membership" organisation,
completely open to any member of the profession worldwide able to pay a
small annual membership fee, so that the membership has exploded to around
15,000, and the largest international committees to well over 1,000.  In
contrast, even though there most be very many times more librarians than
museum professionals in the world, I gather that IFLA still has only
around 2,000 members, while the ICA has slightly more  - but I think less
than 3,000.


Patrick Boylan


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