Michel Van-Praet wrote: >L'ICOM a donc un large potentiel de développement si elle répond aux >demandes des professionnels des musées et leur ouvre des perspectives >nouvelles. I could not agree more, and I take as granted that this is the basic attitude of all participants on this List and the very reason for our debates. There is nothing wrong with being "old" and I do not think any of us has meant to express such an attitude. One of the phenomena of present times that I believe to have observed is that there is no longer such a clear-cut distinction between the ideas and attitudes of younger and older people. I think we should be reminded that this discussion started with Josephine Thang'wa asking for the participation in ICOM of "both the younger and older professionals". And I agree with those being a bit worried about the - at least seemingly - lack of young professionals being active in ICOM. I think the contributions to this discussion are very fruitful, and have at least given me several ideas about how to approach this problem within ICME. But the discussion have dealt with several different issues: A) Informal strategies for attracting young professionals (good ideas have been presented). B) The possibility that the members, and especially the board, of a national committee intentionally or unintentionally tend to reserve the participation in the activities of ICOM for the older, very established members of the museum profession. This eventual challenge I guess must be dealt with within each country - unless there should be a practice regarding membership that is in open violation with the ICOM statutes. C) Whether ICOM should allow students to become members. Personally, I would like to hear more of the pro's and con's. And there are several questions: Should they be allowed to be elected to positions? How does one know when their membership should be terminated without considerable bureaucracy? In principle I am in favour, but I do fear it could add to the European dominance because of the extreme difference in the economic possibilities of students in different parts of the world. On the other hand, there cannot be such an enormous number of them. Anyway, could anybody come up with a balanced list of advantages and disadvantages? Per B. Rekdal ICME chairperson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Change ICOM-L subscription options and search the archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html