0.5 Potential effects of online access on society membership  (Page 6/7)

Any of these publication benefits may contribute to the perceived value of a society’s membership.

Service differentiation

Providing individual members with functionality not available through institutional subscriptions can reduce the substitution of institutional subscriptions for individual membership. Differentiating online features can include personalization and customization; member discussion groups; and support for in-process scholarly communications, including collaborative authoring. Obviously, some versioning approaches—such as embargoing content for institutional site licenses to decrease their appeal as substitutes for individual memberships—would devastate a society’s ability to market an online version of the journal to institutional libraries, typically a journal’s single greatest source of revenue.

Such features may allow a society to increase the value of its membership offering by integrating the online journal into the organization’s overall digital strategy for communicating with (and maintaining its relevance to) its members. Further, as faculty in art and art history cite difficulty finding digital resources as a critical barrier to their use, See Harley et al. (2006), 4-44. a society might extend its member services to include image acquisition and copyright clearance services for publication and teaching. Again, the Society of Architectural Historians ARA image exchange being developed by the Society for Architectural Historians provides an example ( (External Link) ).

Conferences and meetings

A society’s annual meeting is often an important benefit of membership. This is especially the case if one must be a member to deliver a paper at the meeting. Even if membership is not required to participate in the meeting, registration fee discounts provide an economic benefit to members. Analyzing the society’s meeting registration data can help determine the number of members for whom the meeting represents a benefit. This will be particularly useful if the registration information captures, or can be correlated with, such member data as institutional affiliation and profession.

A society should look at several years’ worth of data when estimating the number of members who value the meeting. Researchers who belong to more than one society may attend a society’s meeting irregularly, depending on the meeting’s location or on a timely opportunity to present a paper. Sometimes the pattern of meeting attendance will be easy to discern—for example, half of the members may attend every other year—and a society can estimate the number of members for whom the meeting provides a benefit, even if every member does not attend every meeting.

Other member benefits

A society may offer a number of other member benefits, including:

• Participation in a member listserv;
• Access to special interest groups or eligibility for local chapter membership;
• Classifieds and placement services for job seekers;
• Eligibility for grants, scholarships, and awards;
• Insurance programs and non-publication discounts;
• Continuing education and certification programs;
• Invitations to special events, such as exhibition openings for high-level donors;
• Access to private and special collections;
• Member trips to sites of art historical and architectural note;
• Discounted memberships in museums; and
• Discounted subscriptions to related periodicals.