Dear colleagues,
Following on from all the recent exchanges about conference registrations,
and how to sort out improper use of ICOM identity and facilities from those
whom we seek to encourage:

I strongly support the "generosity approach" to making sure ICOM
International Committee gatherings annually all over the world are
attentive to involvement of local museum colleagues wherever possible - and
indeed move to less well-served parts of the world's museums community when
feasible.  I have been impressed over recent years by the energetically
open approach of most IC Chairpersons I have known, seeking to involve
professional colleagues, whether they are yet members of ICOM or not - and
indeed this is the best way to demonstrate ICOM's relevance to wider
collegial networks than its strict membership lists.  So any use of
membership lists should be in this spirit, and for these purposes, not to
create closed circles of exclusion.

I also take very seriously the need to make whatever efforts possible
THROUGH the ICOM membership base to circulate professional information and
mutual support among museum people who cannot, out of their own income,
possibly pay for personal subscriptions to ICOM.  This was certainly
considered through the close 'ICOM Reform Task Force' discussions of
1999-2001.

I suggest that ICOM needs to return to this issue on a regular basis - not
just for occasional goodwill statements - and to take active steps to
create "shared network partnerships" (with some conscious mapping exercises
undertaken geographically and cross-culturally) to ensure that museum
professionals and colleagues are taking active steps to ensure that
information they have access to, easily and regularly, may be reproduced
(copied) and circulated more widely among other colleagues, with less
access to resources.

And finally to remember: the very people who have most restricted tools and
resources practically and economically have rich cultural and intellectual
experience to offer back to others, as their part of the mutual exchange
process.  It should always be understood as a cycling, re-cycling and
return pattern that is at the basis of what ICOM exists to facilitate.

Bernice Murphy
(Vice-President, ICOM)

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