Dear Gary,

I think that there needs to be some consideration as to what the
institutional members want the extra cards for.  Are these just for the
purpose of passing them around staff travelling abroad etc. who want to
have free admission to fee-charging museums?  Or do the institutional
members want to pay for NAMED members of their staff to serve as their
representatives within ICOM and to play a full part as active members of
ICOM, serving on international committees and running for office within
ICOM etc.?

This issue has been discussed several times previously over the years.
As everyone recognises, nowadays ICOM is massively under-represented among
the staff of the larger national and other major museums of the world,
and my impression is that the proportion who are ICOM members is falling
rather than increasing.  One of the main concerns in the past has been
the risk that if the museum if simply given a handful of ICOM membership
cards to pass around the staff when they are planning to visit other
museums, then even fewer staff members of major museums would join ICOM.

(We have heard of cases where the present two or three ICOM Cards are held
by e.g. the museum librarian or personnel officer and "signed out" to
staff members going on holiday to countries which have admission charges
for museums, with no thought of anyone using them to take part in ICOM
activities such as attending ICOM meetings or becoming active within
ICOM Committees.)

On the other hand, if the plan was to allow the larger institutional
members to nominate additional NAMED staff members to be active members of
all parts of ICOM's work, especially within the national and
international committees, specialist working groups etc. then this would
could be a very good thing.




Patrick

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