Foward From Anner Whitehead

[John I Jones <jijones@usjoneses.com>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: ChatOWhitehall@aol.com
Date: November 20, 2009 9:10:09 AM PST
To: jijones@usjoneses.com
Subject: Please foward to AISDiscuss

Dear John, please forward to AISDiscuss.

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Greetings.

I'd like to speak to a couple of questions on the table, please.

First, with regard to this matter of grants. This is not the first  
time the subject has been raised. I know this because I raised it  
some years ago myself.

I was, and am, concerned about the conservatorial status of the  
material in the AIS Library, and about effecting some sorts of  
mechanisms to enhance access by the members. I did some research on  
the matter, and concluded that AIS was well poised to apply for  
grants, preponderantly from private sector, and possibly the Gates  
Foundation, to underwrite, at the least, purchase of equipment to  
digitize and so back up some of the paper, and possibly foot the bill  
for some professional conservatorial attention for fragile items of  
great importance.

I communicated then with someone in a position to act, and, as I  
deduced from the minutes of a subsequent Board Meeting, the then AIS  
Librarian was apparently directed to investigate the potential of  
"government grants." His initial investigations apparently did not  
lead him to a conviction that further exertions would redeem the  
effort involved, so the matter, so far as I am aware, was dropped. I  
thought this was lamentable then, and I think it now.

The world has changed. Not only has the economic situation shifted,  
but individuals and organizations have been going to town with  
scanners and cameras for a decade, so that it might well be more  
difficult to make a case that the collections of the AIS are unique,  
and thus inherently worthy.

But, thinking positively, if the Society does want to apply for  
grants, and I would encourage you to do so, you will have to define a  
concrete need that money can solve, define a project which can be  
articulated persuasively, and then you must figure out who among  
those with money to distribute may be interested in supporting your  
sort of goal. You must then master the appropriate rituals of  
application, and convince the sources of funding to support you. You  
will be in heavy competetion for limited and shrinking resources, and  
you will get precisely nowhere by saying we are a special case  
because we think so and we want operating funds.

Now, I have a pretty good idea of some of the holdings in the AIS  
Library because I asked the Librarian for an electronic copy of the  
inventory about a decade ago when I assumed Editorship of the New  
Chronicles, a responsibility I was reluctantly compelled to  
relinquish when I took over as Membership Secretary. But the record  
shows that other material arguably should be there which, I have in  
past been informed, is not. Some materials were damaged in storage,  
of course, and there may have been losses due to natural agents or  
human error, but I am speaking, for instance of those art works,  
prints and paintings, bronze plates etc, and personal documents  
donated by Mrs. Peckham as discussed in her obituary in the BAIS.  
Where is this stuff? There may be more examples.

I think, then, that if the Society cannot fully satisfy itself that  
all its treasures are accounted for, and their physical conditions  
assessed, with the collection formally inventoried, and all simple  
conservation issues addressed, then that goal needs attended to  
before you proceed further to engage in large projects involving the  
Library. These are Society assets, after all.

I also think that before you decide to expend the resources to design  
traveling exhibits, you should do a feasibility study covering all  
aspects of that issue. And if I may,I think it would be well to  
include the Librarian in these discussions from the get go, rather  
than just deciding to heap on more work without knowing whether the  
idea is inherently unworkable or whether the Librarian is able and  
willing to undertake the chore.

One thing I --and others, I assure you-- do not admire about the way  
the Board has exercised its prerogatives in past is the way that it  
will simply vote more duties without any discussion of  
practicalities, or without discussing it with the person who will  
actually have to do the work. Nor is care invariably taken to avoid  
blindsiding the position holder in these cases. Quite aside from the  
fact that the person doing the work is likely to be among the  
soundest sources of information about practicalities and potential  
unintended consequences, it is simply neither necessary nor courteous  
to proceed in that manner, especially given most of your personnel  
are volunteers, or nearly so.

So, returning to these exhibits: I think the feasibility study needs  
to focus first, in a general way, on identify what you have to offer  
that is truly unique and of broad interest, and to whom you would  
like to send it. After you identify potential exhibition venues, you  
must ask them whether they actually have any interest in partnering  
with you, which will involve the question of whether they have the  
resources necessary to make use of what you propose to pull together  
and send out.

If there is interest, and those interested are willing to mount a  
traveling exhibit, and offer publicity--who pays?--and put up with  
any visiting public, and deal with freight issues--who pays?-- etc  
etc etc, then you will need to decide how to produce a fully  
professional curated display, which will need to be designed, with  
dedicated fitted crates--what about climate control?-- and so forth,  
for travel. This is likely to be an expensive and intricate  
production,  and it seems obvious you cannot make it happen by waving  
an enthusiastic hand in the air.

About the those potential exhibition venues: Money is tight and  
library and museum staffs are skeletal. If my information is correct,  
Cornell has sent some 400 library workers out to pasture in recent  
months, including many professionals. My friend at the Bailey  
Hortorium, a distinguished woman known far and wide in the  
horticultural research community for many years, has more or less  
become a part time clerk there, and the great catalog collection has  
been consigned to a vault. Another friend, the Director of the Center  
for Historic Plants at Monticello, recently found her job summarily  
abolished after 17 years, and she now has a part time curatorship  
while the Center is being reoriented from research to a retail  
operation. The archives and catalog collection of the Massachusetts  
Horticultural Society are stored off site, and the financial  
situation there is so dire that there is no one available who can  
retrieve them for any researcher and volunteers have to attend to  
correspondence. This last according to an email I received yesterday  
in response to my inquiry about an item I needed to consult.  
Elsewhere, may people who still have jobs are often doing the work of  
several dismissed colleagues, and are feeling the strain.

So the question of who will be available to deal with your exhibition  
on the other end is very real. And of course, many of the libraries  
in question own collections equal to that of the AIS, or nearly so,  
and have missions of their own to carry forth, and grants that they  
themselves want to get based on their inventive use of their own  
collections, and so forth. MOBOT leaps to mind.

Because money is so tight for many educational institutions, it is  
not, I think, likely one can successfully seek to hitch AIS's  
pressing needs to someone else's well established, but possibly  
precarious star. Indeed, some might suggest it would be well to be  
mindful of other organizations being cynically interested in solving  
their own problems with AIS' resources, like the Hager money, not to  
put too crass a point on it.

As for assuming you can pass responsibilities on to the local  
societies, I'd like to remind you that not every AIS member is active  
in a local society. I haven't been for many years. We hear all the  
time that iris folks are the best folks but some of them are not, and  
some affiliates are just ossified or disfunctional, and it might be  
well to bear that in mind, because I know for a fact, and from the  
horse's mouthes, that it is a factor in your falling membership. You  
cannot do much about this except remember, always, that a bad local  
membership experience may potentially be redeemed by offering a  
national membership experience which is rewarding and interesting and  
diverse enough to compensate. I have also concluded that many of the  
established processes and rituals and activities of the AIS are so  
archaic as to be quaint and horticulturally irrelevant to many  
gardeners, which puts potential members off, probably including  
interesting individualistic cranks who might have useful creative  
ideas. But all that is a subject for another day.

In summation, I think you need to identify and salute your real  
assets-- including your dedicated workers-- and acknowlege your real  
limitations and challenges-- which I do not think still include a  
pervasive resistance to change and an ignorance of the digital  
world-- and you should pursue coarses of action which are well  
researched and well thought out, with all due attention given, in  
advance, to practicalities, including bottom line money issues.

Good minds, fortunately, are something there are plenty of in AIS,  
and there are fine venues of sharing information and kicking ideas  
around to see what, collectively is deemed sound and worthy of  
further attention, so that there can be no reason whatsoever to short  
the research and investigative processes of project development.

I repeat: You cannot successfully implement elaborate and possibly  
impractical schemes by simply voting. That is just making talk  
happen.  And you are going to have to find a means of discussing hard  
practicalities without getting bogged down in personalities. Every  
member is an equal, and all AIS Members, and the AIS Board uniquely,  
have a right and a duty to ask the hardest questions they can think  
of when the very future of the Society is at stake. Any proposer of  
any substantial idea for change, or any drain on the finite Society  
resources, and especially the proposer of any elaborate project or  
scheme founded squarely on facts and assumptions not yet in evidence,  
should anticipate these questions, and be prepared to supply credible  
answers.

Cordially,

Anner Whitehead

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