Annual General Meeting of ICOFOM
Minutes of ICOFOM Annual General Meeting 2011
23 October
Held at the National Palace Museum, Taipei
1. CALL TO ORDER
The meeting started at 4.40pm.
Initially the meeting was not quorate, but President Ann Davis called it to order and shortly after it became quorate.
2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
There were no minutes from the previous AGM held in Shanghai. Please note that on the agenda for the Taipei meeting the date was given incorrectly as 10 November 2011, it should have read 12 November 2011.
3. PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Ann Davispreferred not to read a president’s report; she opened the meeting by observing that ICOFOM had had a busy year with good things achieved. She noted that most of the activities took place within the various committees of ICOFOM.
Ann Davis said that ICOFOM had received 9316 euros from Paris ICOM with1474 euros to sponsor a young members conference attendance already committed.Tatiana Galyankina received a travel grant to attend the Taipei conference. We also were awarded 3000 euros to initiate the translation of the Dictionnaire.
An account in Canadian dollars has been opened, but Ann Davis explained that ICOM Paris has decided that the separate committees’ accounts should be held in Paris and that during 2012 all overseas accounts will be closed. She noted that this was a controversial decision when it was announced at the June meeting.
Ann Davis has been elected chair of the Committee on International Committees.
Martin Sharer observed that twenty years ago there was a discussion about how to give legal status to the committees. ICOM does not like the problem of liability hence the decision to centralise accounts.
Ann Davis outlined how some committees raised a lot of money and wanted to become somewhat separate from Paris even to the point of holding conferences outside the time of the triennial conferences.
4. COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE REPORTS
(a) ICOFOM SIB AND SAP
Olga Truevtseva outlined the work of ICOFOM Sib and SAP during 2011 (see report).
(b) ICOFOM LAM
This report is provided to members in the conference papers. There was no one from ICOFOM LAM to give the report, Ann Davis has an English translation available that will be posted on our website.
(c) SURVEY REPORT
Jan Dolak said that a questionnaire was sent to all members on 16 February 2011. It is clear that the ICOFOM email list is outdated. There are some serious implications from this, for example, the validity of proxies cannot be certain. The list seems to include voting, non-voting members and perhaps even non-ICOFOM members.
Only 34 replies were received. Of those who replied, all said that they read the ISS, while 40 percent said they visited the ICOFOM web site. When asked whether the membership lists should be available on the web, 31 said ‘yes’ and three said ‘no’.
One hundred percent said they would wanted to share their papers on the web site and, when asked whether ICOFOM should share its meetings with other committees, 21 said ‘yes’ and nine said ‘no’.
For the full text of the survey click “about us” on the website.
Martin Sharer noted that the terminology has changed. “Voting member” now means member and “non-voting member” now means associate member. He asked whether we should have a “members only” section of the website.
Chan Wan-chen suggested that a share button could be used to link ICOFOM to, for example, facebook.
(d) WEB COMMITTEE
The report was previously delivered and was posted on the ICOFOM website.
(e) PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
Suzanne Nash gave the report. This committee was formed in 2011.
In January 2011 the translation from French of What is a museum? was published in English, The English version was translated by Suzanne Nash and edited by Lynn Maranda and Ann Davis.
Suzanne Nash said that the Dictionnaire took ten years to complete, but that it had actually started with UNESCO in 1971. She described the project as so ambitious that it was almost impossible. AndréDesvalléesstarted work on it in 2003 and was later joined by François Mairesse when it was decided to limit the project to a Frenchproduction only in order to make the project manageable.
The publications committee considered these questions: who is our public? what needs to be translated? what should go on the web? Do we need a web journal?
We need high quality publications, but their production is limited to committee members who have the time to work on them.
Nelly Decarolis and Monica Gorgas worked on translating the Spanish abstracts.
The main problem is the linguistic ability of writers whose first language is not English.More Anglophoneediting help is needed.
A positive development is that the web is going very well, but a web journal is beyond our resources. We should not use terms in the call for papers that provoke confusion, for example, “dialogism”. Jennifer Harriswho wrote one of the position papers commented that the term was defined very clearly, but it did not go onto the web early enough to prevent confusion.
(f) COMMITTEE ON RULES AND VOTE
Lynn Maranda said that work on the Rules concluded in June 2010, but that that was not soon enough for a vote to be taken in Shanghai.
Nellie Decarolis also worked on the Rules inan ex-officio capacity.
Lynn put to the meeting a small change: whether the words “and museum professionals” should be added to “museum workers”.
First motion: Suzanne Nash moved that the motion be accepted, and Jennifer Harris seconded it. There were six in favour and the motion was passed.
Second motion: Hildegard Vieregg moved an amendment arguing that the words “museum workers” was reminiscent of DDR language. She encouraged the meeting to accept the words “work of museums and training of museum professionals “. Suzanne Nash seconded the motion and it was passed unanimously.
Third motion: Suzanne Nash moved that the meeting accept the revised Rules, Jennifer Harris seconded it and it was passed unanimously.
Lynn Maranda thanked the Rules committee.
5. REVIEW OF PROGAMME FOR 2012
Ann Davis thanked Suzanne Nash and the publications committee for their work on the ISS.
The main problem of this publication is that it has no impact factor, this is important for the university-based writers who might receive no publications points for writing for the ISS.
LOCATION AND VENUE OF 2012 MEETING
There was broad discussion on the question of where the 2012 meeting should take place: in Brno or Tunis. Everyone agreed that the choice of Brno, with planning by Jan Dolak, would result in a very smooth meeting. The encouragement from ICOM Paris, however, is to be more inclusive of Africa. With that in mind, the meeting voted to choose Tunis for the 2012 meeting. If the arrangements in Tunis are not developing well by the end of 2011the meeting might take place in Brno.
Ann Davis hopes that we might be able to hold the 2014 meeting in Brno.
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
On the question of the various publications, the meeting wished to continue to support various projects, but there is much uncertainty about funding so that it is difficult to plan.
The meeting noted that Chen Kuo-ning was an amazing fund raiser and organizer and the very generously supported conference in Taiwan.
The triennial in Rio de Janeiro will have simultaneous translations for the large key note events, but not for the individual committee meetings. ICOFOM needs to plan for the translation costs for its own meeting.
Ann Davis thanked everyone and Jan Dolak thanked Ann for her work during 2010.
6. CLOSE
The meeting closed at 6.05pm.
Jennifer Harris
Recording secretary