Annual Conference: Washington DC, USA (with IAML)
President: David G. Lance, Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom
Editor: Ann Briegleb, Ethnomusicology Archives, Music Dept. UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
Last November the Executive Board met in Stuttgart for its regular interconference business meeting, the main items of which Helen Harrison has summarized in this issue of the PHONOGRAPHIC BULLETIN. The composition of the Executive Board that will take office after the 1984 conference was one question that occupied our discussions.
Of course, neither serving presidents nor any other current Board members have any prerogative on the choice of the succession. Nor indeed have they any influence beyond that which every other IASA member also enjoys. Lack of statutory power does not however preclude lack of interest and, at a mid-point in our own term of office, it is hardly surprising that we should engage in some speculation about our successors. Fundamental in these thoughts was the question of the Association's electoral system itself. That is to say, have we got it right? Both inside and outside the present Board I detect some doubts!
In the course of its history IASA has operated two different methods for electing its officers. Before the 1978 conference in Lisbon it was a function of the serving Executive Board to recommend its successors to a so-called Nominating Committee which, provided its members approved of the candidates who were proposed, had the task of presenting them in the form of a "slate" on which IASA members attending the conference during election year voted either to accept or to reject. Not surprisingly the system had its critics! Allegations against the procedures included the contentions that Executive Boards had become self- perpetuating oligarchies, were insensitive to the wishes of the membership as a whole, which was thereby prevented from making any real expression of its own will. In a nutshell, it was undemocratic.
Having touched on some of its alleged faults it seems only fair also to mention some of the arguable benefits of IASA's first electoral procedure. It permitted a selection of officers more representative of the international distribution of IASA's members; it offered greater insurance that those elected would be people regularly able to attend conferences and Board meetings; it provided the Board with members who had sufficient practical resources to be able to support the burgeoning activities of the young, small and financially weak Association.
This catalogue of advantages and disadvantages could be greatly expanded, but I think that the foregoing conveys the essence of our original statutes. Within them a practical balance was struck by our founding fathers between democracy and utility. As a result Constitution Mark I served the interests of the new Association well enough for several years.
On 18 July 1978 Constitution Mark II came into effect, partly as a result of growing criticism of its predecessor but also as a result of a general constitutional revision that was instituted by the Executive Board itself. From this date elections to the Board became the statutory responsibility of the entire membership. Any (paid-up!) member of IASA could henceforth stand for office and propose or second favoured candidates. Serving members of the Board had the same rights, but no more. The International Association of Sound Archives thereby was democratized. (A process which becomes complete at the Washington conference, if the General Assembly there approves the introduction of postal voting.)
After the Board elections in Budapest - the first to be held under the new arrangements- some of the criticisms made of Mark I were to be heard whispered of Mark II. "There is only one candidate for each office; we have no choice!" "There are two British members; the Board is unrepresentative!" "These are the same old faces; the oligarchy still rules!" Ironically IASA's first "democratic" election had produced a result which was in many ways identical to the kinds of Boards which had emerged during preceding paternalistic successions.
What conclusions may we draw? It is that the kind of people recognized by earlier Boards of well- intentioned members to be good candidates, tend to be also the people who would get themselves nominated for office under any electoral system? Is it that the large majority of members are disinterested in actively using the rights they now possess? Are most of our members actually unaware of the "new" procedures? Is the present electoral system simply unsuitable for this Association? At this distance in time, it seems likely that the Board which is elected in 1984 by Mark II procedures will have to consider some of these questions and come up with answers which, possibly, may lead on to electoral system Mark III. Or maybe next time ....
Members who are not familiar with the present constitutional basis of Executive Board elections can, and indeed should, become so, by writing to our Membership Secretary for a copy of IASA's statutes. The future composition of the Board, and with it much of the professional development of the Association, rests for the moment with the membership as a whole. It is much to be hoped that a sufficient number of colleagues make use of their opportunities so that our 1984 elections will be as democratic, as representative and as competitive as the terms of electoral system Mark II envisaged and allow.
I wish a happy and successful 1983 to sound archivists anywhere.
D.G.L.
PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
The Constitutional changes affecting the definition of the Association's National Branches, and the introduction of a new category of "Affiliated Organization", were among the most important developments that took place during the recent Washington Conference.
When IASA was formed in 1969, our founding fathers wrote into the original Constitution "Members of the Association in any country may be constituted a National Branch of the Association with the approval of the Executive Board." This minimal statement provided the very bare basis for their establishment and development until 1983. Under the original arrangements all the branches, in theory at least, were formally integrated within the international body and nominally subordinate to it. This situation, it should be said, was not to the taste of all the branches and occasional tensions arose in consequence. Before 1983 the Constitutional arrangements which existed for the government of IASA did not, however, allow any alternative relationship between national groups and the international body.
Today, as a result of amendments that were carried by a large majority at the Washington General Assembly, we have a new arrangement. It is still possible to become or remain a National Branch but now there also exists the opportunity to affiliate, as opposed to integrate, with IASA. The nature of this choice is well described in the preamble to the amendments which Rolf Schuursma prepared on the Executive Board's behalf: "Applicants should provide a statement about their wishes as regards the character of their relationship with IASA. A wish for a close relationship points to a National. . . Branch. A wish for a loose relationship and a firm priority of national needs may point to an Affiliated Organization." Thus, for the first time, the established National Branches of IASA can decide for themselves what kind of relationship they want to have with the International Association and other sound archive groups that have never been a branch of IASA (and may never wish to be) have an alternative arrangement which they can consider. These changes will certainly make IASA a more flexible organization; they may also provide a means for the Association to represent and serve the international community of sound archives even more comprehensively than it does at the moment.
Although extremely Important in their own right, these developments are also interesting in that they illustrate the way in which an Association like IASA has to adapt and evolve to take into account the changing character or needs of its membership. To national bodies or special interest groups it may sometimes seem that the International Association is unaware of or unresponsive to their legitimate parochial needs and, given the time that it does take for the Association to implement change, their impatience is perfectly understandable. However, bearing in mind that the first National Branch was not formed until 1976 and that, by 1983, only six existed it is not really surprising that it has taken us this time to make clearer and more detailed provisions for them. Clearly branches needed first to exist for a few years, to develop their activities, to evaluate their own needs and to give them expression before the Association could see how to adapt its structure so as best to meet needs that varied and to some extent conflicted.
Adaptations and changes within the Association can be therefore achieved when needs are clearly identified and expressed. The democratization of our election procedures, to allow any member of IASA to stand for a place on the Executive Board (about which I wrote in my column in the last issue of the BULLETIN) is one such example. Another is the wish among members to take this process farther, by introducing a postal ballot for elections, which was expressed at the Budapest conference in 1981, carried by the General Assembly in Washington in 1983 and will be employed for our elections in 1984.
It seems to me that our Association is not unresponsive to need, but that it does have difficulty in reading the collective mind. There is, in other words, a communication problem caused by the fact that IASA is an international association, that it meets rarely and that its interests are widespread and disparate. It often is hard to tell when an individual criticism represents a collective wish and, without greater and more regular feedback from our members, it is hard to see how this situation can be improved.
Certainly there are problems, the scale and nature of which the Association needs to be able better to monitor. For our French colleagues there is the problem of language in an organization where English has become the predominant means of communication. Is the solution, as was suggested in a recent issue of Sonores, the formation of a Mediterranean grouping of sound archives and-- if so — how then is the principle of internationalism to be maintained let alone developed? For those working in archives of spoken word recordings there is the danger of their professional interests being submerged because a large proportion of our members are mainly concerned with music. Would the needs of these two groups be better met in isolation from each other or can IASA's structure be adapted so as satisfactorily to meet them, or both? Does there continue to be more benefit than restriction for our members by sustaining our traditional relationship with IAML? Certainly our two associations, meeting together at joint conferences, have to make compromises that would not arise if we met separately. There also is the problem of special interest groups. Archive technicians, for example, who feel an understandable need for a greater number of more technically concentrated and sophisticated seminars than can easily be accommodated within an umbrella organization like IASA. Similarly, radio archivists, commercial records librarians and other specialized types of sound archives would prefer greater opportunities to discuss their particular problems.
This list could be greatly expanded, but the point should be clear. The range of interests within IASA is extensive and if the Association cannot effectively monitor and meet significant needs then it is vulnerable to internal conflicts or to splintering into smaller groups. In the after-glow of the highly successful Washington conference I have no serious fears of these developments occurring In the short term. However, I am certain that tensions and new needs will surface in the future. The Association's capacity to evolve and adapt so as to meet them lies at the heart of our prospects for future successful development.
Perhaps by using the columns of the PHONOGRAPHIC BULLETIN the needs, wishes, suggestions, criticisms or complaints of our members can be aired and the feedback I have suggested as presently lacking be regularly provided.
DGL
