OUTREACH FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE IAML TREASURERAuthor(s): Pamela ThompsonSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 46, No. 1/2 (January-June 1999), pp. 121-122Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23509065 .

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IAML OUTREACH 121

OUTREACH FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE I AM L

TREASURER (Pamela Thompson)

Probably the most satisfying aspect of being IAML Treasurer is the contact with new members and emerging branches around the world. The next most

satisfying is being in a position to advise and sometimes to offer practical help. The saddest part of the job is being unable to respond in any very positive way to many other requests for assistance.

IAML's first Outreach Fund was established by the Council in 1994 when it was agreed that 2.5% of the Association's subscription income should be devot ed to helping "developing" and "post-Communist" countries. In 1997 the Council agreed that 2.5% of all income should be devoted to this purpose. Over the years, in line with the Council's original wish, the fund has been used only to help with the cost of transporting donated material to music libraries and institutions who need it. Material has been sent through the Fund to Albania, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland. Many of the con

signments were very large. All were much appreciated. It has, perhaps, seemed surprising that there have not been more applications to the fund, but in fact this is only a testimony to the many libraries who have themselves paid for large consignments of material to be sent.

So, those were the successes of the fund. The sad fact is, that for every par cel sent, there is a plea for help of another kind: support for members to attend our annual meetings. Again, many of us know that IAML national branches have often financed the attendance of individuals who have asked for help, and national branches organising conferences have moved heaven and earth to raise funds for speakers and others who could otherwise not attend. But demand for assistance always exceeds the funds available, and not all countries have enlightened government organisations or charities who are able to help.

This year, thanks entirely to the good interest our funds have accrued in recent years, IAML was able to set up a new Conference Outreach Fund and set aside DM 30,000 for this purpose. The interest from that sum will be avail able each year to assist the national branch organising the conference to bring to the meeting a delegate who could not otherwise attend. It is a very small

amount, but it is, we hope, a beginning. From its inception, IAML's Outreach Fund has attracted some donations,

from both individuals and from national branches. Many, understandably, work

through their own national branches, so we should not be surprised that dona

tions are not bigger or more frequent. However, when you next consider your

good fortune in winning the lottery or when you are thinking about making

your will, think of the Outreach Fund. We are willing to wait many long decades for your donation. Because two things are sure: there will still be appli cants hoping to make their contribution ... and there will still be a LAML

Treasurer trying to explain to the many enthusiastic members who are des

perate to attend one of our meetings that there is little we can do to help. ÏÏ any members know of good sources of funding elsewhere, please tell the

Treasurer. Very often we will suggest large foundations or government organ isations, but our knowledge of possibilities is often restricted to our own coun

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122 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 46/1-2

tries. Indeed, many of us are ourselves applying. If you think that there is room

for one more application, it could make so much difference to those who have

to be refused every year, because the funds are not there.

Outreach From a Participant's Perspective (Roger Taylor)

The United Kingdom has long felt itself an island apart. At least that has been

its recent political image. Geographically our island barriers are falling away. We are now linked to Europe umbilically by the Channel Tunnel, we will soon be spending Euros, and our pets will have their own passports. Of course we

music librarians feel differently, despite any perception of insularity borne of

our parallel national-international Branch membership structure. From the

inception of IAML, UK members have been deeply involved with its interna tional work. Their participation and commitment have dispelled any image of

professional insularity. As the focus of a Commonwealth of independent nations, the United

Kingdom has long regarded itself as an active player on a world stage. Professionally, some IAML(UK) members feel that we may not have devoted

sufficient energies towards our "New Commonwealth" colleagues. Geo

graphically disparate, sheer distances from UK prevented any systematic explorations such as have followed elsewhere in more recent years. Correspondence in recent years has involved colleagues in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, but it has been quite impossible to follow up such contacts by personal visits and systematic explorative analysis. IAML(UK) members them selves have received individual communication from those who had the initia tive to write, and individually they may have responded. This was true of an

approach from Katerina Gosh in Tiranë to the Royal Academy of Music

Library in London, a year before I undertook systematic research prior to my first exploratory visit. Such contacts however seem always to have been ad hoc without any strategic Branch involvement per se.

Since its inception, of course, IAML has sought to be as globally all-embrac

ing as possible. More than twenty years on, however, Harald Heckmann,

speaking as General Secretary (immediately prior to assuming the IAML

Presidency) at the Jerusalem conference in 1974 alluded to a continuing Western preponderance of Association membership.1 In 1987, Association President Maria Calderisi Bryce reported to the Amsterdam Council meeting, "the action of the Board of offering complimentary subscriptions of Fontes to one designated institution in each of ten countries where there are no mem bers of IAML.... The countries are: Argentina, Cuba, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Peru, and Romania."2

Internationally, therefore, there had been a conscious awareness of the need for international outreach well before the end of the 1980s. It was then, however, perhaps more than any time before, that "outreach" emerged as a pro active international concept, a reaction to the collapse of European communism

1. Fontes Artis Musicae 22 (1975): 16.

2. Fontes Artis Musicae 35 (1988): 12.

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