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 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Change ICOM-L subscription options and search the archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html