16th August 2007
Dear BAICE Members,
I am writing to greet you and to give you a report at the end of the year 2006-2007 which is the first of my two-year term of office as Chairperson of the BAICE executive. We can report the following.
1. We have revised the Constitution which had not been done since 2002. The main points are that
- We have deleted corporate membership as we do not have any corporate members, and did not think this category worth keeping. More importantly, the Acting Managing Editor of the journal Compare asks that current members should be individuals and not institutions or corporate bodies. In order to ensure the continuing success of the journal, they need to be able to charge full commercial rates to libraries and other corporate bodies, and therefore ask the BAICE nor solicit any further corporate members.
- We would like to permit a President to serve for two years if he or she desires. The rationale for this is the pool of potential people is narrow, and if we can find a good President who is really interested in the Association it could be beneficial to let him or her serve for two years rather than one.
- We have changed the provision that the members run the Association to one under which the Executive runs the Association on behalf of the members.
- We have put the web manager as one of the officers as this is a clearly designated task, and an increasingly demanding one in modern society.
- We have allowed for more than one student representative.
- We have tightened wording and made the text more logical.
2. At the Queen’s University conference in 2006, we introduced a new pricing structure whereby non-members had to pay a higher change than members. This was equivalent to the price of membership, and enabled us to offer non-members a year’s membership of the association. This is in line with practice in several other associations, and should be good for the organisational health of BAICE.
3. We have devoted attention to serving students. We have organised a Writing Workshop at the UKFIET conference, and re-structured the BAICE Student Meeting to make it more useful to members and potential members.
4. We have tried to visualise BAICE as a British nation-wide association, and to this end have co-opted a Scottish member to the Executive, and are proposing two nominations from Wales for your approval. We already have representation from Northern Ireland.
5. We have made preparations for the 2008 conference to be held at the University of Glasgow.
6. We have re-designed the BAICE leaflet to look livelier, and to match the colours of Compare, our flagship journal. BAICE has reached a new agreement with Taylor and Francis under which the advance royalty payable to BAICE will be increased from £5,000 to £15,000 which should more than adequately cover the amount currently paid each January to the two editors. Student members will be provided with copies of Compare.
7. We have worked closely with the publishers and the editors to promote the success of the journal, Compare, which has gone to five issues and is being prepared for possible inclusion in the Social Science Citation Index. Tony Gallagher and I have edited a special issue arising from the Belfast conference.
8. We have maintained contact with the Academy of the Social Sciences and proposed two former chairpersons for membership.
9. We have devised our first strategic plan which we are circulating for your approval.
I hope that we shall go from strength to strength. We greatly value your interest and look forward to seeing as many as possible of you in Glasgow next year.
Yours sincerely
Rosalind Pritchard