Annual Conference: Berlin-Bogensee, Germany (with FIAT)
President:James McCarthy, National Film and Sound Archives, Australia
Editor: Helen P. Harrison, Open University Library, Milton Keynes, UK
IASA: THE FIRST TEN YEARS: Some personal memories
Rolf Schuursma, Rotterdam, Netherlands
HOW IT BEGAN
In 1968 the Director of the British Institute of Recorded Sound, Patrick Saul, invited me to attend a meeting in Paris. As far as I remember he explained in a letter that a group of members of the International Association of Music Libraries IAML had plans to found a new international organization of sound archives since the existing Fédération Internationale des Phonothèques (FIP) was apparently not functioning well. He requested me to participate in the deliberations as a representative of an archive of spoken word recordings.
The archive I came from had been established in 1961 as part of the Institute of History at Utrecht University and my work had to do with the use of sound and film records in historical research and education in the Netherlands. To that end I had been able amongst other things to take over the original gramophone and tape recordings of spoken word programmes made by Netherlands Radio since the beginning of the 1930's: a fine collection to which I gradually added other recordings, partly through our own oral history projects. Through visits to the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and Patrick Saul's Institute I had made a few contacts abroad but 1968 meant the beginning of quite some more international involvement.
The conference to which Patrick Saul invited me, took place on the afternoon of 4 September 1968 at the Département de la Musique of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. I vividly remember meeting for the first time Vladimir Fédorov, Director of the Department and President of IAML. Others present were Dr Kurt Dorfmuller of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in München, Patrick Saul, and also Dr Herbert Rosenberg, Director of the Nationaldiskoteket in Kopenhagen, who like me had not been involved in the difficulties between IAML and FIP which became the main subject of discussion that afternoon. Dr Israel Adler, Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, was the Chairman. Also present was Roger Décollogne, Director of another Department of the French National Library: the Phonothèque Nationale. Μ Décollogne was, however, also President of FIP and he was in no mood to have his Association reorganized. I recollect particularly a fierce discussion in rapid French between Décollogne and Fédorov which I could barely follow. The gist was obviously that no agreement could be reached. The next morning some of us convened at Israel Adler's temporary residence in the rue Malar to draw up a preliminary letter of intent to establish a new international organization of sound archives.
Israel Adler took the document to the IAML Conference which that year had its venue in both Washington DC and New York. There it was decided to continue working towards an international association of sound archives. Don Leavitt, Assistant Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, took upon himself the task of making a draft Constitution for deliberation during the next IAML Meeting in 1969 in Amsterdam. I did not attend the 1968 Conference and learned the results only later when Israel Adler approached me to take care of the arrangements for a Constitutional Assembly in Amsterdam. Thus I became the first of the local representatives for the preparation of IASA's Annual Meetings.
DELIBERATIONS IN AMSTERDAM
In March 1969 I requested help from André Jurres, Director of Donemus and Chair οf the Organizing Committee for the Amsterdam Conference. Since he could not spare any additional space, my friend Lou Hoefnagels, Director of the recently established Institute of Theater Klank en Beeld (Theater Sound and Picture) in Amsterdam agreed to put at our disposal the conference room on his premises. On Monday August 18, 1969, the group of IASA Founding Members met there for the first time. The full list of names is certainly in IASA's archive, but apart from Lou Hoefnagels, I remember, in particular, Patrick Saul, Don Leavitt, Philip Miller of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound in New York, Dietrich Lotichius of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg, Herbert Rosenberg, Claes Cnattingius οf Swedish Radio and above all Timothy Eckersley of the BBC. Tim and I had been in contact as early as 1965 when he urgently requested me to return some recordings belonging to the BBC Sound Archives which I had used for a documentary film on the Battle of Arnhem. Of course, when we met again he had quite forgotten about that letter and we soon became friends.
In the Theater Institute our deliberations concentrated on the draft Constitution prepared by Don Leavitt. An important point of discussion was Patrick Saul 's proposal to create a kind of inner circle of professional archives to keep the new organization from going astray because of an eventual majority of individual collectors and lending libraries. We ended with a compromise, making a distinction between a restricted Council of Research Sound Archives and a General Assembly open to all members. This structure was, however, never realized and the relevant paragraphs were deleted from the Constitution during the Lisbon Meeting in 1978. What Patrick Saul apparently had in mind was an international network οf independent sound archives representing their countries in all kinds of exchanges οf recordings. The matter became an interesting point of discussion in IASA and I remember in particular the papers read during the Bergen Meeting of 1976. My own views on this question and related problems were published several times in the Phonographic Bulletin and in "Sound Archives. A Guide to their Establishment and Development", edited by David Lance and published by IASA in 1983.
IAML AND IASA
I cannot recollect if we talked in depth about a division of tasks between IAML and IASA or - to be more precise - IAML's Record Libraries Commission. The matter got at least some attention because a Joint Committee was formed between the Record Libraries Commission and IASA and under that title several interesting combined sessions were held during the next few years. The Record Libraries Commission occupied itself with collections and archives of music recordings - in those days certainly by far the biggest group of sound archives - it was far from clear what role our IAML friends exactly intended for IASA. There were very few research archives of spoken word and the sound archives of broadcasting institutions had already found their way into a Radio Sound Archives Subcommittee of IAML's Record Libraries Commission, so what was left?
Shortly after the conference Timothy and I had dinner in Amsterdam. There we discussed amongst other things the position of our brand-new Association. Afterwards I wrote in my diary: “IAML only music recordings, IASA all recordings". This rather puzzling phrase may serve as the sediment of what certainly has been a wider discussion between the two of us. Yet during the Amsterdam Conference little had been decided about a division of tasks and in hindsight one can only wonder about the apparent inability of IASA's Constitutional Assembly, myself included, to solve a problem that proved to be so important for the relationship between IAML and IASA. However, would IASA have come into existence if at that moment it had claimed the entire sphere of sound archivism at the cost of IAML's Record Libraries Commission? I doubt it, taking into account that nearly all participants in the Constitutional Assembly were members of IAML. For some time to come IAML also carried the main burden of the conference organization.
At one moment during the Conference I remember sitting in a taxicab with Israel Adler and Don Leavitt on our way to Donemus. Just when we passed the Concertgebouw Israel asked me to become the Secretary of the new Association. Don Leavitt had already agreed to become its first President, while Claes Cnattingius had been invited to fulfil the function of Treasurer. Patrick Saul agreed to become Vice-President and Don Leavitt would go to Paris to invite Claudie Marcel-Dubois, Director of the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, to be the second Vice-President.
The actual founding of the new Association happened without much ceremonial activity on the morning of Friday, August 22, 1969. In the afternoon I attended the final session of the IAML Conference in Donemus and there received my first impression of the way Vladimir Fédorov used to handle these meetings - an amazing experience: Fédorov acting as the perfect schoolmaster, hearing the lessons of his pupils. I was, however, duly impressed by the work accomplished under his guidance. As far as it went for IASA, the meeting in Amsterdam was a positive and stimulating experience for someone who was about to start his first term of office on an international Executive Board.
THE FIRST YEARS
Apart from discussing the forthcoming Annual Meeting of IASA which would take place during the IAML Conference in Leipzig in 1970, the few members of the new Association had in fact only one activity in mind, namely to prepare in cooperation with the Record Libraries Commission a Directory of Sound Archives. It was an ambitious project which despite a lot of effort failed. Instead, in 1976 the Executive Board of IASA decided to restrict itself to a Directory of Member Archives, the first of which was compiled in 1978 by Ann Briegleb, Head of the Ethnomusicology Archive of the University of California at Los Angeles (together with Don Niles). A subsequent edition was as we know completed by Grace Koch of the Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra.
I cannot recollect any further activities during the first year apart from membership recruitment and a great deal of related correspondence. Claes Cnattingius and I had a lot of contact. During Don Leavitt's Presidency, and given a certain lack of communication in writing from him, Claes and I solved quite a bit between ourselves. Claudie Marcel-Dubois and I also corresponded frequently, so that, when in 1973 on the steps of Bedford College, London, we finally met it was as if we knew one another already for a long time. For support I could also rely on the "Stichting Film en Wetenschap" (Film Research Foundation) where in 1970 I had become Head of a new Department, the Documentation Centre. The Sound Archive which I had established in 1961 became part of the Centre. In particular my secretary Phita Stern soon proved to be of great value for the Association, and from the beginning the Secretariat acted as a kind of central agency of IASA and most executive activities were undertaken in Utrecht.
In June 1970 IAML and IASA convened in Leipzig. IASA had not much of a programme of its own: the meetings were at least partly joint sessions with the Record Libraries Commission. Moreover, in the beginning I did not contribute much to the design of our Conference programmes. The membership drive, the general correspondence, the administration (in Utrecht we took care of the financial administration as well) and other activities, but also my lack of experience in the international field made me feel that the sessions could better be handled by the other Board members. My recollections of the Leipzig Meeting are vague, but I remember particularly one event: in a combined session with the Record Libraries Commission Don Leavitt introduced Virginia Cunningham of the Library of Congress who explained to us the MARC-format. Little did we then appreciate the importance of her presentation.
A PHONOGRAPHIC BULLETIN
In Leipzig the Executive Board decided to create a periodical. Without it IASA had indeed nothing to offer to members who could not come to the Annual Meetings. Herbert Rosenberg, who frequently acted as a highly valued advisor, was the auctor intellectualis of the name Phonographic Bulletin, in 1993 replaced by IASA Journal It took a while, though, before the journal became reality. Only shortly before the St Gallen Meeting in 1971 did I find time to compile the first issue. Phita Stern took care of the production - if that ambitious term can be used for the simple thing we finally sent to our members.
Several characteristics of the first issue became part of the Association's house style. The logo was made by Rob van der Elzen, the graphic designer of the Film Research Foundation. I still enjoy its simple and clear lines on IASA's stationary and publications. We chose different colours of green for the cover and lettering (as οf Nr. 16 the lettering became black). The A-4 format remained until 1977 when it was decided to change to B-5. Each issue became a unit in itself and the system of three issues annually or three issues between Annual Meetings became standard as well for as long as the Bulletin was published under its original name. I soon began to use it for the publication of papers read at conference sessions, in order to make sure that every member would eventually have the possibility of reading them. By taking this course a steady flow of contributions was secured and the issues were produced without too much trouble. During the first few years of the Phonographic Bulletin, the editing and production was entirely an Utrecht affair.
On arrival in St Gallen where we convened in August 1971, the new periodical got a lot of favourable comment and I was proud that Phita Stern and I had succeeded in launching this medium for communication with the membership. Only its name-giver Herbert Rosenberg was sadly disappointed: his request for identification of some very old and unknown labels failed because we couldn't print their pictures. Later we succeeded in providing fine illustrations, but the expertise needed for such undertakings was not yet part of the Utrecht experience. Another printed matter appeared in 1973. At the London Conference I introduced a leaflet explaining the aims of the Association. It included an application form for membership. The leaflet served well in subsequent recruitment drives.
MEETING IN ST GALLEN
In St Gallen I felt for the first time that IASA was on its way. Not only the Bulletin, but also the sessions and perhaps on top of everything the special style and atmosphere of the IASA group - altogether it created an optimistic mood which I really enjoyed. However, the programme was as improvised as before. Don Leavitt invited Claes Cnattingius and me to his hotel the day before the Conference started and on the spot we designed a kind of final scheme. Particularly now that IASA has become a streamlined Association, the story of how we organized it in St. Gallen sounds ridiculous and absolutely horrible, but strange as it may sound, it worked. However, there was no reason to be proud of our efforts and I realized myself that our dealings were simply not good enough to provide a bright future for the young Association.
Moreover, there was the unclear division of tasks between IASA and IAML. In St. Gallen the Radio Sound Archives Subcommittee held an interesting and ambitious plenary session, well prepared by its Chairman Dietrich Lotichius. Joop van Dalfsen, the Head of Sound Archives of Netherlands Radio, our Japanese friend Shigeru Joho of the NHK Broadcasting Center in Tokyo, Dr Folke Lindberg of Swedish Radio and several others read papers. IASA had not been involved in the preparation. I didn't feel good about that situation but the time was obviously not ripe for a different solution, if only because at that moment practically all IASA members were also involved in IAML and didn't feel like moving the sound archival themes entirely to IASA.
From a joint session of the Record Libraries Commission and IASA I remember in particular a talk by Don Roberts, Music Librarian of Northwestern University at Evanston, about projects of ethnomusicological research. I also remember a discussion of the copyright situation in the United States and elsewhere. A regular point of deliberations was the lack of accessibility of radio sound archives for university research. Dr Harold Spivacke, retired Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, pressed for a code of practice of IAML, IASA and the European Broadcasting Union EBU. His paper, which was published in the Phonographic Bulletin Nr.7 of July 1973, got ample discussion during the Bologna Meeting in 1972 but didn't produce results. Efforts of among others Timothy Eckersley to have some kind of code adopted by the EBU failed despite apparent goodwill on both sides.
ELECTIONS IN BOLOGNA
In Bologna IASA's General Assembly took place early during the week and was partly dedicated to the seemingly eternal matter of the still existing FIP and another "Congrés Mondial" organized by that Association. Our ever so diplomatic President had to spend quite some effort in calming the emotional feelings of many participants in the Meeting. This was, however, as far as I can recollect the last time FIP caused any trouble. Soon after it must have become obvious that there was in fact no problem: FIP's activities simply ceased. In connection with this I would like to mention Mlle Francine Bloch who as the representative of the Phonothèque Nationale always kept a very kind and gentle mood though she must have felt the pressure of conflicting interests.
During the General Assembly elections were held for IASA's second Executive Board. Since the Constitution restricted the President's term to three years, Don Leavitt resigned. He was the first to stand candidate for Vice-President (Past-President), thus paving the way for what became a tradition. At the suggestion of the Board the Nomination Committee listed Timothy Eckersley as his successor. In March 1972, during an Oral History Conference in Leicester, I had had occasion to speak to him about this proposal. Tim promised to think it over seriously. He was indeed elected as the second President of IASA. Claudie Marcel-Dubois was reelected as Vice-President. Patrick Saul did not want to be nominated for a second term.
During the General Assembly Herbert Rosenberg proposed to fill the still vacant third office of Vice-President and to have a spontaneous vote for a Hungarian representative, Dr Ivàn Pethes of the National Management Development Centre in Budapest. Together with his colleagues of Magyar Radio, Magdalena Cséve and György Csàszàr, he just then made his first appearance at an Annual Meeting of IASA. Ivàn was elected and became Vice-President. He took a stimulating and lively part in the deliberations of the Board but circumstances kept him from activities between Conferences. Ivan resigned in 1975 after one term. He died in 1980, leaving behind recollections of a good friend and a fine scientist. Dietrich Schüller commemorated him in the Phonographic Bulletin of July 1980.
The last session in Bologna was dedicated amongst other things to a presentation by Joke Rijken who was by then in charge of the Sound Archive of the Foundation in Utrecht. She demonstrated tapes containing short clippings from stock material meant to illustrate certain themes of contemporary history for secondary school use. There was quite a discussion about the value of such teaching tools and the appropriate duration of each clipping. Next we greatly enjoyed a contribution by Bob Carneal, Chief Engineer of the Recording Laboratory of the Library of Congress, about preservation and conservation technologies.
A NEW PHASE
On my return from Bologna, the Utrecht IASA Bureau entered its second phase resuming its efforts to assist the Executive Board, to keep the administration of membership and finances straight and to produce the next Phonographic Bulletins. I would like to mention here how my Director, Paul Janssen, who himself was Secretary-General and later Honorary Member of the International Scientific Film Association, stimulated our work. He made it possible for Phita Stern to occasionally assist in our meetings and never objected to the rather large amount of work that the Utrecht Bureau undertook in the service of IASA.
In the meantime Tim Eckersley began to plan the forthcoming Annual Meeting in Bedford College, London, with great care, inviting speakers, requesting summaries οf their papers for early publication in the Bulletin and making arrangements with the local Organizing Committee. He saw to it that IASA became fully recognized as a partner in the Conference programme and secured a place for himself amongst the speakers at the official opening. There I enjoyed his contribution as a break-through in the relationship between IAML and IASA, and as a recognition of the independent status of the new Association. I will not go into the programme of the London meeting except mentioning the fine tour to the British Institute of Recorded Sound where Patrick Saul gave an interesting talk about his experiences and views Afterwards Frank Gillis of the Archives of Traditional Music in Bloomington Indiana, played ragtime and there was a splendid buffet to comfort us.
In connection with the London conference I mention two new members of the Association who eventually would play a large and influential role in IASA's development: David Lance, Keeper of the Department of Sound Records of the Imperial War Museum in London, and Dr Dietrich Schüller, Director of the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna. The history of Dietrich and I goes back to 1962. In that year, at the first of several visits to the Phonogrammarchiv, a young man entered the room of the Director, Dr Walter Graf, and served us coffee. Much later Dietrich told me that it was him. I had to confess that unfortunately I remembered the coffee but not the man behind it. Later, after he had succeeded Dr Graf as Director of the Phonogrammarchiv, Dietrich Schüller sent a representative to the Congrés Mondial of FIP in Brussels to find out about that Association. The reports were not encouraging. If I am well informed it was Ann Briegleb who drew his attention to IASA.
David Lance and I first met at the Oral History Conference in Leicester where I tried to convince Tim Eckersley to run for President. We met again in London in 1973 where David delivered a paper about his Archive at the Imperial War Museum. IASA was in need of new people. The Association was entering its fifth year and it was about time to prepare for more professionalism and expansion. David and Dietrich were just the right persons to help IASA move into a higher gear.
JERUSALEM AND MONTREAL
The Conference of 1974, which took place in Jerusalem, went smoothly, with Avigdor Herzog of the Hebrew Sound Archives as an able local organizer for IASA's part. The Executive Board was, however, rather incomplete and its meetings were somewhat "sober". Timothy Eckersley, Claes Cnattingius and I discussed several possible candidates for the election of members for the Executive Board due in 1975. At my recommendation we decided to suggest Dietrich Schüller for President and David Lance for Secretary. Tim suggested Léo LaClare of Public Archives Canada for Treasurer. Tim and I agreed to stand candidate for the position of Vice-President, Tim as Past-President. Like me Claudie Marcel-Dubois was a candidate for a third term.
In the morning of 22 August 1974 Tim and his wife Penelope Eckersley, Dietrich Schüller and I took a tour in a taxicab to Bethlehem and there, in the middle of that historic town, Tim and I invited Dietrich to stand for President. That same day, late in the afternoon, in a bus to Caesarea where the Conference would enjoy an open air performance of Schoenberg's "Moses and Aaron" by the Hamburg Opera, I invited David to stand for Secretary. Both times we got a "yes". It was a positive result of our dealings and I looked forward to our next meeting with confidence. During the Conference of 1975 in Montreal the election of the new Executive Board went as before. Since there were no counter-candidates, the members suggested by the Board and listed by the Nomination Committee were deemed elected. However, already it was becoming clear that the election procedures would have to be changed, many members apparently feeling that a more open method was desirable.
After having completed his term as Past-President Don Leavitt retired from the Executive Board. Since then my contact with him became far less frequent. I met him for the last time during the Arlington Conference in 1983. Two years later, in November 1985, Don died after a long illness. I wrote an In Memoriam for him in the Phonographic Bulletin (Nr.44, March 1986). He was a very kind and capable men who in the first rather uncertain phase of IASA guided it skillfully to safer waters.
A MORE PROFESSIONAL APPROACH
The new Board took over with the vigour that was to be expected from Dietrich Schüller, David Lance and Léo LaClare. They took care of matters that indeed needed reform. The financial state of the Association was not too good, partly due to the fact that earlier suggestions to increase the dues had not been agreed upon by the General Assembly. Moreover, I had handled member contributions in a somewhat liberal way. According to my view a steady growth of the membership had been more important than a severe system of collecting the dues. The existing deficit did not cause much trouble, partly because it was in fact rather small, and partly because the Film Research Foundation temporarily supplied the lacking funds. It was, however, only to be praised that the new Treasurer took things in hand with energy and got rid of the deficit in a short period of time.
The Phonographic Bulletin also underwent change. It received a B-5 format and a better lay-out. Dietrich Schüller earned my gratitude when he offered to have the Bulletin printed in Vienna. The Foundation in Utrecht was less and less able to do the job and some nasty delays in publication were the result. Dietrich's secretary, Frau Victoria Ernst, took good care of the production.
In Montreal the new Executive Board decided to have mid-term meetings, so as to plan the final preparation of the conferences and to decide about all kinds οf intermediate affairs. For the first meeting of this kind we convened in April 1976 in the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris where Claudie Marcel-Dubois was our host. There, at a proposal of Léo LaClare, we agreed to make the Editor an officer in his own right. As a consequence I left my brand-new position of Vice-President to continue work on the Phonographic Bulletin as my main job. We filled the vacant position cleverly but in my opinion somewhat improperly with the help of the article in the By-Laws about mid-term vacancies in the Executive Board. That seemed, however, the only reasonable thing to do. Dietrich Schüller suggested inviting Ann Briegleb for the now vacant post of Vice-President. She accepted and her temporary appointment was afterwards approved by the Nomination Committee and the General Assembly.
Another activity of the Board was the formation of committees, the first of which was the Technical Committee. Dietrich Schüller became its Chairman, while Robért Ternisien of Radio Canada undertook to chair a Copyright Committee. In the year before I had not really been one of the promotors of committees and, indeed, they meant another burden for the management of IASA and the Secretariat in particular. Yet, there were obvious advantages: they involved many more members in IASA's activities and they took care of an ever growing part of the Conference programmes.
NATIONAL BRANCHES
At David Lance's initiative the decision was taken to create a network of National Branches. We succeeded first in establishing branches in Great Britain and the Netherlands, while in Austria a more independent organization was formed. In France the successful AFAS also went its own way without, however, undoing the ties with the parent organization.
The Netherlands Branch, founded by Drs Ruud Renting, Archivist of the City οf Rotterdam, and myself, consisted of a rather loose group of sound archivists. We undertook visits to one another's institutions and exchanged news about the developments in our field. One of our members was Joop van Dalfsen, who had once hosted the meeting in the Radio Sound Archives in Hilversum. He stayed with us until 1978 when after a short illness he died, thus sadly ending a long and distinguished career in Dutch Radio. My first contact with him dated from 1961 and since then I had profited in many ways from his experience and friendly help. As a homage to him I printed his contribution to the IASA Annual Meeting in Mainz in the Phonographic Bulletin of July 1978. He was succeeded by an automation expert from Wageningen Agricultural University. Hans Bosma, who in 1984 followed me as Chair of the Netherlands Branch and in 1987 became Vice-President of IASA. Later the Netherlands Branch was transformed into an independent Association of Audiovisual Archives with Piet van Wijk, Director of the Film Research Foundation, in the Chair.
AGAIN IAML AND IASA
The important developments in IASA which I just mentioned were typical of the approach of the three new Executive Board members. It was a period of vigourous attack and it was interesting to see how such different personalities could cooperate to the same purpose of a stronger and, above all, more professional IASA. At the same time there was some discussion about a more independent course from IAML but I myself could not as yet imagine Annual Meetings of IASA without convening together with our parental Association. In my opinion IASA was still too small for such undertakings and since most of our active participants were also member of IAML, separate conferences would certainly have caused problems. Besides, even as the representative of an archive of spoken word recordings I did not want to lose the close contact that had gone on in the musical field - a contact that IAML provided in so many ways.
In the years after the Montreal Annual Meeting, the shared conference was, however, still the rule but backstage irritations were growing on both sides. Especially the overlap between IAML'S Radio Sound Archives Subcommittee and IASA became more and more of a handicap. Even in one or two speeches during the farewell dinner in 1976 in Bergen, Norway, some of the irritation shone through. A lack of clear understanding of what IASA stood for - to unite research sound archives throughout the world, quite apart from their musical or non-musical character or their radio or research background - added to the confusion. Otherwise, the Bergen Conference was quite interesting, more members than ever before involving themselves actively in the sessions. The special style of the Association found expression at a splendid "social evening" organized by Tor Kummen of Norwegian Radio, our local representative in the Norwegian Organizing Committee. It was one of the nicest evenings of its kind and I think back to it with pride and pleasure.
After the Meeting in Mainz, where we convened in 1977, the relationship between IAML and IASA took a more promising turn. Harald Heckmann who had just finished his term as President of IAML (he was appointed Honorary Member of the Association, later to become its Honorary President) visited me in Utrecht to see if we could work out a solution. As Director of the Deutsches Rundfunk Archiv in Frankfurt he was very well at home in the sphere of sound archives and from the beginning had regularly taken part in IASA's sessions. We did, however, not go beyond an exchange of opinions or perhaps the first feelings about a compromise. Thereafter I corresponded a lot with Dietrich Schüller and the other members of the Executive Board to find out what space we had for manoeuvre.
THE "LISBON DOCUMENT"
In 1978, during the Lisbon Conference, Harald Heckmann and Dietrich Lotichius invited Dietrich Schüller and me for dinner at the terrace of "A Gondola", a restaurant near the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Conference venue. At that moment I was still pessimistic about the chances of a satisfactory deal. However, after some deliberations, Harald proposed to suspend the activities of the Record Libraries Commission and to establish a new Joint Committee of IAML and IASA on Music and Sound Archives to coordinate activities of both Associations in the field of music and sound recordings. Dietrich Schüller and I accepted this proposal as a starting point for further talks and during the following days Harald and I produced a document with the text of our tentative agreement. It took quite a lot of time to formulate the draft but since we had passed the deadlock I enjoyed working towards a solution. Just before the final session of the Conference, both the IAML Council and IASA's General Assembly approved our "Lisbon Document".
Later events included the "Frankfurter Treffen" (1980) when Harald Heckmann, Dietrich Lotichius and I came together in the Deutsches Rundfunk Archiv to discuss some points that needed clarification. Finally, Ulf Scharlau and Dietrich Lotichius were the architects of a Radio Sound Archives Committee under the aegis of IASA while the Radio Sound Archives Subcommittee of IAML was deleted (1983). It was the end of a long period of unclear relationship between the two Associations. In the meantime, the Joint Committee which resulted from the Lisbon agreement staged several combined sessions, but later apparently did not feel the need for additional activities on top of the rather elaborate programmes of IAML and IASA. Its first Chairman was Claes Cnattingius, to be succeeded by Ulf Scharlau, both of them deeply and professionally interested in music and sound archiving.
Returning now to the Lisbon Meeting: that was also the occasion for the election of IASA's fourth Executive Board. Already in Mainz, David Lance had invited me to stand candidate for President after I had urged him to continue as Secretary for another term of three years. I agreed to stand for election with the expectation that together with him in that most important function my job would not be too difficult to handle.
In accordance with the tradition Dietrich Schüller was nominated for Vice-President and we were happy to have Marie-France Calas and Tor Kummen as candidates for the other two offices of Vice-President. Marie-France joined IASA in Mainz. As Head of the Phonothèque Nationale she represented one of the distinguished institutes in our field. Another newcomer was Ulf Scharlau whom I just mentioned in relation with the Radio Sound Archives. Ulf was Head of Sound Archives at the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart and had been our local representative in the Organizing Committee for the Mainz Meeting. Ulf stood for Treasurer. After a few years of interim Vice-President, Ann Briegleb agreed to have herself nominated for Editor to succeed me in that function. Unfortunately, after only one term, Léo LaClare left us, following a career in the Canadian Civil Service. During the three years he was with us, he made his mark as a capable and enthusiastic member of the Executive Board and a good friend.
After two terms of office Tim Eckersley left the Executive Board as well, but he continued to attend the Annual Meetings. In 1980, in Cambridge, he was appointed Honorary Member of the Association and it was my pleasure as President to present him with that mark of honour. Shortly afterwards Timothy died. His wife Penelope invited me to come to London and speak at the Memorial Service in St James', Piccadilly, on behalf of his IASA friends throughout the world and in March 1981 I published an In Memoriam in the Phonographic Bulletin. Tim Eckersley is unforgettable. His services to the Association were manifold but I remember above all his kind and cheerful personality and the many talks we had about a wide range of professional and cultural subjects.
ELECTION PROCEDURES
The incoming Board was still elected according to the old Constitution - to the chagrin of quite a few members. Before the Lisbon Meeting, Léo LaClare had agreed to design an election procedure whereby the Nomination Committee would circulate the entire membership for nominees instead of completely relying on the suggestions of the outgoing Executive Board. Other changes in the Constitution included the deletion of the so called Council. The Executive Board accepted his proposals, amending them only in minor respects during its mid-term Meeting in Vienna at the beginning of 1978. However, it was not possible to have the General Assembly decide about the proposals in time for the next elections and to have them executed according to the revised Constitution.
Instead, the Board's proposals for Constitutional reform were on the agenda of the second meeting of the General Assembly, at the end of the Lisbon Meeting. Contrary to what I expected, Dietrich Schüller and Léo LaClare had a hard job defending them. In the meantime I sat outside waiting for the outcome of the deliberations about the Lisbon Document in the IAML Council. After hearing the positive result of IAML's deliberations I joined the General Assembly where the constitutional discussion was still in full spate. Finally, after the Assembly voted in favour of the Board's proposals, Dietrich Schüller hurriedly inaugurated the new Executive Board and handed me the traditional ballpoint from Michigan State University which Don Leavitt in 1972 for lack of a more official symbol had presented to his successor Tim Eckersley. Thereafter we could just reach the main hall in time for the customary final session of the Conference. Barry Brook, President of IAML, invited me to the platform to sit with him and Anders Lönn, IAML's Secretary General, while representatives of IAML's and IASA's Committees came forward to report their activities during the Conference.
LOOKING BACK
The last day of the Lisbon Conference, the new Executive Board had its first meeting in the penthouse of our hotel. I tried to draw up a few guidelines which could help us with our work during the new term. It was a pleasure to chair a group of such distinguished sound archivists from different countries. In July 1979, in my Presidential Address at the Opening of the IAML- IASA Conference in Salzburg, I summarized IASA's accomplishments during the first ten years. Looking back today, fifteen years later and a quarter century since the founding in Amsterdam, I still feel privileged that I was part of that experience. I enjoyed the pioneering, the building and growth, but above all the contact with so many sound archivists and music librarians throughout the world, many of whom became friends for life.
