As Chair of BPG I attended a meeting of the Internal Advisory Group of AIC on November 4, 2006 in Washington DC. The attendees included chairs from all of the specialty groups, committees, publications, and task forces as well as the AIC staff and AIC Officers.
One of the first topics was an overview of the coming AIC annual meeting in Richmond VA from April 16–20, 2007. The meeting schedule is coming together very well considering all of the deadlines were much earlier than usual this year. The general session topic of “Fakes, Forgeries and Fabrications” has a wide appeal and is being marketed by AIC to other groups that might be interested in this subject. Experts on authentication, connoisseurship, scientific analysis and detection have been invited to both speak and participate in panel discussions. AIC is planning to have information about the speakers, with their recommendations on books and websites of interest, on the AIC website before the meeting.
BPG had over thirty-five papers submitted and has twetny-six talks scheduled during the meeting. As you already know, BPG is holding a joint session with the ICOM-CC's Graphic Documents working group and has also scheduled a concurrent session with RATS on paper-oriented technical talks. With the help of Eric Pourchot, BPG successfully obtained grants from the Kress foundation for ten of our twelve international speakers.
The AIC business meeting will now be called the Members Meeting and, as an added attraction, there will be giveaways this year in honor of AIC's 25th anniversary.
DID YOU KNOW? You can get free respirator training from a certified Industrial Hygienist at the AIC meeting (ticket required, so sign up when you register).
The tentative dates for the 2008 meeting are April 22–25 in Denver, CO. The tentative hotel is a newly built Hyatt Regency with room rates of $159 a night. The topic for 2008 is "Unique Collaborations."
AIC had sent an online "Certification Needs Assessment Survey" to the membership in October 2006 and reported on the results. They received a 22% response rate which was a much higher response rate than they had anticipated. What was interesting was that while many respondents indicated that they felt certification wouldn't affect them, they also indicated that they supported the effort nonetheless and would apply for certification. The potential cost of any certification program is a major consideration for the majority of respondents. The survey results also showed that there is still much misunderstanding about what certification would entail and what is happening at this point. Terry Drayman-Weisser spoke about how AIC will be creating a certification webpage with a Frequently Answered Questions (FAQs) section, as well as the results of the survey.
Terry spoke about the importance of keeping the membership accurately informed about what is happening with the Certification Committee and below is a summary of what she reported. Terry reiterated the reasons why the Certification Committee is recommending that AIC and the membership take this step. Certification would help give status to conservators, especially when they work with other credentialed professionals. It would also raise standards for our profession as it would set in place a re-certification system that would mandate that conservators remain active and develop professionally. It is very important that AIC and its membership develop standards for the profession before someone else, such as the State or the Federal Government, does so with requirements that we don't agree with.
The Certification Committee is recommending some general guidelines for certification:
In addition, the Committee has identified several other steps that need to be taken such as: developing the exam questions using an educational advisor, obtaining legal advice, developing rules of governance and developing study guides and bibliographies. They are working with the National Certification Commission. Certification will be discussed further at the Issues session at the AIC meeting in Richmond in April 2007. It is important to understand that the AIC membership has approved the Committee to study the issue of certification and come up with recommendations. The current timeline is to have the membership vote on approving a certification model by 2008. Anyone with questions or comments should contact Terry Drayman-Weisser at tweisser@thewalters.org.
As a reminder of BPG's involvement in this process, Certification Task Force Chair Susan Russick has written the following summary:
The Specialty Groups have been called on to identify and prioritize subject matter for the written exam. Each Specialty Group created a task force in 2005 to write an Opinion Document regarding the certification process. The BPG's Task Force is Linda Blaser, Janice Ellis-Stagnitto, Elmer Eusman, Cyntia Karnes, Susan Russick (Task Force Manager), Glen Ruzicka and Karen Zukor.
The "Defining the Conservator: Essential Competencies" document (available on the AIC website) has been used as a basis for subject matter prioritization. The first round of Opinion Documents was submitted in or around February 2006, including the BPG's 42-page document. A committee made up of managers of each Specialty Group Task Force and coordinated by Fred Wallace decided for a variety of reasons to revise the Opinion Documents this summer and fall. The primary goal of the revision was to include a simplified ranking of the Essential Competencies to group them by those that were more important and those that were less important. The BPG Task Force decided to let the existing document stand without revision, as a full ranking was already included. Although the deadline for the revised documents was October 30, there have only been three respondents so far (BPG with no changes, ASG probably with no changes and TSG's revised document). It is our understanding that the rankings will be compiled and turned over to test writers this spring.
Rick Kerschner reported that AIC is in sound financial position with an increase in membership generating an extra $10,000 in dues this year. Donations to FAIC from the membership are down. I would encourage everyone to think about making a tax-deductible donation to FAIC every year. Any amount is encouraged as long as you participate. It is very important that we show our support to our profession.
Eryl Wentworth reported on her efforts to make the AIC more efficient and organized. One problem has been with the website that, although developed rather recently, was not created in a way that allows for changes to be easily made to the content. In addition the membership database is old, not particularly user friendly and can't be integrated with the website. Eryl is looking into the possibility of applying for a technology grant to cover the costs associated with updating the website and membership database.
AIC is developing a "Cultivation Packet" with a general information brochure on conservation as well as AIC membership and donation information. This packet will be available for use by the members; it should be ready for use by spring of 2007. The office will be moving sometime after the 2007 AIC meeting. At the moment they are looking to partner with another association to reduce costs of the move and give AIC shared use of a conference room.
2005/2006 membership year saw a 90% renewal rate for members. Next year they are aiming for 92%. AIC is always looking for ways to entice members to move from Associate to Professional Associate (PA) and from PA to Fellow. To that end a challenge has been made to the specialty groups to increase their number of PA and Fellow members between now and April 2007. The group with the largest gain will win $300 towards AIC annual meeting expenses. So let's take advantage of this financial incentive and encourage those around us to apply for new status. If you graduated in 2003 or earlier you are already eligible for Professional Associate status. If this is you, I urge you to download the form from the AIC website and get cracking!
DID YOU KNOW? As an AIC member you can join ICOM, usually only available through AAM, without having to paying the full AAM membership. More information will be available about this on the AIC website shortly.
One big initiative is to try to convert all old published AIC newsletters and Preprints for all specialty groups for posting to the website. The committee is looking into vendors to perform this so that the format for all of these publications would be consistent. Part of this cost may be borne by the specialty groups. I will be following up with the Communications committee to gather further information on this initiative and how what we have already done (with putting our BPG Annuals online) might be affected.
The committee is also creating a taskforce to create a "Best Practices" guideline for digital photographic conservation documentation which will eventually be placed online.
DID YOU KNOW? Currently there are "Best Practices for Electronic Off-Line Publications" and "Best Practices for Printed Publications." Also available for use by AIC members is an "Introduction to Conservation" PowerPoint presentation.
And finally, the following committees are looking for members: Education and Training, Program, and Health and Safety. JAIC is looking for reviewers. If you are interested in getting involved please contact me and I will steer you to the appropriate persons.
Emily Jacobson
BPG Chair
ejacobson@ushmm.org
(202)488-0477