The International Planetarium Society (IPS) Council accepted John Dickenson's recommendation to undertake a major review of the history, function, and membership offerings of the IPS. Planetarium veterans, Ian C. McLennan and Robert J. Ballantyne will probe every facet of this venerable organization. A key feature of their study will be an online forum to be held in January 2004.
"A majority of people working in this profession are not even members of IPS," says John. "We need to know why, and what we have to do to make IPS attractive to them. Recruiting them is the only way that we can truly represent and serve the Planetarium industry."
There are 444 planetariums in the United States that belong to IPS, and 192 in the rest of the world. Clearly some countries are underrepresented. Only 4% of the planetariums in France are members of the IPS. "Membership increases every second year when we hold our international conference," John points out. "We know this meeting is of value ‹ but could we be doing more with the conference?"
"We have issues of language, enormous distances, cultural differences and a variety of planetarium operating philosophies;" John notes, "but every year our theaters serve millions of visitors. Surely we can work better by working together!"
Planetarium.net, a new service of Dome-L, has been chosen as the online site of a live discussion of IPS. Robert Ballantyne commented that we need to hear what people are really thinking about IPS. "Online forums have emerged as way an international group can act as a real community," he said. This forum is a key feature of the IPS study. Regular announcements about the timing of the online discussions will be published on Dome-L.
Ian McLennan points out that for a good discussion we need people to come to this forum as if they are attending a conference workshop. "Treat this thoughtfully and with creativity," he said. He is urging members of the community to go to www.planetarium.net and join the forum now, in advance of the IPS discussion. "Please encourage everyone you know in the business to be there this January," he said. "Yes, people who are not IPS members too!" Planetarium.net is a new service that began operation last summer. Planetarium.net is at Planetarium.net.