Membership Committee Report

NEWS FROM THE MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE â€“ MAY 2008

Preliminary discussions are underway concerning the pros and cons of forming one regional group comprising the Asia and Pacific regions. Committee members are in favor of this plan.Â The Pacific Islands Group was recently enlarged to include members from Australia and New Zealand.Â We have more than 20 Asia members currently not affiliated with a regional group and this incorporation of Asian members into the Pacific group would be a workable plan until a separate Asian group is formed. Please give us your thoughts on this. If there are no objections, we will move forward on formalizing this plan.

The regional group representatives have been contacting existing IAMSLIC members who are currently not subscribing to our email discussion list and encouraging them to do so.Â Chris Nelson (Australia) actively kicked off this campaign and his work is greatly appreciated. In the past, many avoided subscribing due to heavy interlibrary loan traffic on the list.Â However, thanks to the active and efficient use of the IAMSLIC Z39.50 Distributed Library, this is no longer a problem. We encourage all members to subscribe to the discussion list.

Instructions may be found here: http://www.iamslic.org/index.php?section=22

The regional groups are also composing welcome letters that will encourage new IAMSLIC members to be active participants in their regional groups.Â Thanks to Bart Goossens (Belgium), the EURASLIC welcome letter is already being used. Olga Akimova (Russia) has kindly translated this letter into Russian.Â The committee is actively seeking new members. Special thanks for major recruitment mailings that were done by Murari Tapaswi (India) and Jean Collins (Italy).Â Murari is trying to increase our membership in Asia and Jean has concentrated on fisheries related organizations.Â Also, thanks to Amy Arisola (Philippines) who is promoting IAMSLIC within the SEAFDEC network.

Another recruitment mailing is underway in North America targeting both organizations that formerly had member librarians and organizations that appear to be unaware of our existence.

WE RELY ON EXISTING MEMBERS TO HELP RECRUIT NEW PEOPLE. Keep in mind that we also grant one-time three-year sponsored memberships to those needing financial aid to join the organization.Â If you wish to suggest an individual or organization for a sponsored membership, please contact your regional group representative or any member of the membership committee. Committee members can be found here:http://www.iamslic.org/index.php?section=46

Membership brochures are available on the website in 5 languages: http://www.iamslic.org/index.php?section=3

We recently added a brochure in Portuguese. Special thanks to Maria Salete Ribelatto Arita for providing the translation and to Gabriela Silvoni for making this happen. The printable membership directory is constantly updated to reflect both new members and changes to entries for existing members.

The online membership directory is both searchable and printable and can be found in the members only area of the IAMSLIC website http://www.iamslic.org/index.php?section=19Â

IAMSLIC currently has 359 members. Please join the membership committee in welcoming the following new members:

Ahmed El Nemr

Ministry of Scientific Research, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF)

Alexandria, Egypt

Domingo Tasso Junior

Universidade de Sao Paulo, Instituto Oceanografico (IO/USP)

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Carola Kauhs

Max-Planck-Institut fuer Meteorologie: Bibliotheks-und Informationsservice des ZMAW

Hamburg, Germany

Carla Wood

Fundacion Chile Library