IAML in 2017 & Happy New Year 2018

The end of the calendar year is the time to summarize achievements and to recall the most important events from the year that has passed. For IAML, the year 2017 was very successful. It was full of important accomplishments and remarkable occasions for IAML members to meet, talk and share professional knowledge.

Pia Shekhter, our great Secretary General, has compiled a list with highlights from the last General Assembly held in Riga. This is a good way to remind ourselves of what we have achieved and what every IAML member can be proud of.

•   A new brochure was produced
•   Terms of reference were established for all IAML groups (sections, project groups, study groups, committees and sub-committees)
•   Work spaces for IAML groups on the website were established
•   The membership database was updated
•   The IAML Historian, Roger Flury, updated the IAML chronology on the website
•   We had a successful congress in Riga
•   Four issues of our excellent membership journal Fontes Artis Musicae were published
•   The first-ever Pan-American Regional IAML Conference, hosted by the U.S. (MLA) and Canadian (CAML) national IAML branches was held in Orlando, Florida, in February
•   The first-ever joint conference of IAML, ICTM, and IMS was held in March on the campus of NYU Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The conference title was Music as Cultural Heritage: Problems of Historiography, Ethnography, Ethics and Preservation
•   An important milestone for IAML was the establishment of IAML as a legal entity. IAML is now incorporated in the U.S., in the state of Wisconsin, where its legal address is the headquarters of A-R editions, the printer of our Association’s journal
•   Robert Cohen and Liesbeth Hoedemaeker-Cohen have offered an amazing gift to IAML in the form of a travel award to support IAML Congress Travel. The award is in honour of Liesbeth Hoedemaeker-Cohen and is called the Liesbeth Hoedemaeker-Cohen Fund for IAML Congress Travel
•   Recent Publications in Music moved to an online database on the IAML website
•   We now have complete electronic access to our journal, a goal that the membership has long asked for, with issues of Fontes available via the IAML Web site to individual members on JSTOR (1954-2015) and Project Muse (2016- ).
•   We established a Publications Awards Programme for outstanding articles in Fontes Artis Musicae.
•   The IAML website benefited greatly from the contributions of IAML members
•   IAML's social media presence continued to be active

Thank you, Pia, for making this list for us. It is impressive!

It was also the year of elections for Institutional and Subject Sections Officers (see the results here). Members of the two new Awards Committees, IAML Publications Awards Committee and The Liesbeth Hoedemaeker-Cohen Fund for IAML Congress Travel Awards Committee, have been appointed. Another important announcement has been made in recent months: the Board recommends Anders Cato (Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces) for the position as Secretary General. The Board has also approved temporary appointments for Richard Ranft (British Library) as the Webmaster and Michelle Hahn (William and Gayle Cook Music Library, Indiana University) as the Assistant Web Editor. Voting will take place at the General Assembly in Leipzig.

The year 2017 was filled with an intense professional activity of many IAML members both nationally and internationally. All the reports, collected on the Congress 2017 webpage, show a great number of actions, projects and achievements. From the news on the websites and social media of National Branches we can also learn about conferences, seminars, and annual meetings that have taken place in recent months. (I would like to encourage you to keep sending reports as a way to share information with your colleagues). I had the privilege to take part in some of these events: The 4th Congress of RIdIM-Brazil/The 2nd Congress of IAML-Brazil in Salvador, Brazil in July, WLIC IFLA Congress in Wrocław, Poland in August, and The National Conference of IAML Poland in November. Every time, it was a great opportunity for me to meet IAML colleagues and get inspiration for future activity. I am so grateful for that. 

Dear IAML Members, Dear Friends,

I would like to thank everyone for being a part of the IAML family. Thank you for every support given to the Association, and for offering so many opportunities to work together and to face new challenges. Now, in the beginning of the New Year, we are planning our activities in a small or a big scale, on the local, regional or worldwide level.  Whatever the plans are, I wish you a lot of success in achieving your goals and dreams.

May this New Year bring you, your families and friends much joy, happiness and health.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Stanisław Hrabia, IAML President