At the inception of the International Nannoplankton Association, in The Netherlands in 1977, it was considered that actions were more important than structures and so an ad hoc committee was formed with different members taking on loosely defined responsibilities. As the association has grown so has the list of committee members but we survived without a formal constitution until 2002, when men took over. The present set of officers and their field of activity is informally outlined here, the bylaws explain more formally how we ought to do things. Contact adresses are given on another page.
This page was written Oct 2002, last updated Oct 2010.
The President makes sure everything is working smoothly and has overall responsibility for the running of the association, promoting its activities and developing new initiatives. It was decided in 1992, when Katharina stepped, down that in future Presidents would be elected for not much more than four years. Paul Bown started office in Sept 2008 so should remain in office until Sept 2012.
A useful post to keep our favourite colleagues active in the association. The Past Presidents have kept a benevolent and encouraging eye on developments.
The editor receives scientific copy for the journal from the bibliographer and other contributors, arranges refereeing of research articles, edits and collates copy and sends it off to the publishers (Blackwells) as camera ready copy. Or such is the theory, in practice the editor has often had to hassle for, write and rewrite copy, sort out miscellaneous problems and often act as a default chief executive officer.
Following a decision at INA 8 (the nice meeting in Bremen) news items are now separated from the Journal into the NannoNews newsletter. The NannoNews Editor is responsible for: extracting regular contributions from the other officers, and conference organisers; soliciting reviews of conferences and books; ... and encouraging members to send her information on projects, workshops, students, cruises, etc. She also sends the copy to the WWW editor for publication on the website.
The Secretary/Treasurer maintains the database of members, produces address labels, is responsible for the collecting of membership dues, reminding late payers, striking off very late payers, maintaining the INA bank account, paying bills (mainly for printing), producing annual accounts, restraining the officers from indulging in foolish expenditure, and making sure that the association remains solvent. The posts of Membership Secretary and Treasurer have been separated in the past, but this did not prove very efficient.
The UK treasurer maintains a sterling bank account. This is necessary since the Journal is printed in the UK and so bulk of our expenditure occurs here.
The bibliographer produces the "Bibliography and Index of Calcareous Nannoplankton" this involves (a) Finding nannoplankton related articles, by scanning likely journals and from reprints sent direct to him. (b) Checking the articles to develop keyword indexes and to extract data on any new taxa or taxonomic combinations proposed in the articles. (c) Producing a bibliography in good time for each journal issue. Previously all this carried out by one person but as we all get increasingly busy and nannoplankton studies diversify this is no longer practical, so Mario has taken on the role in association with a small team of collaborators, notably Ric Jordan and Harald Andruleit.
The coccoliths email list was set up by Helen Gillespie to assist communication between nannoplankton workers, including many who are not members of the INA. The mailing list organiser has to make sure the list is functioning smoothly, sort out technical problems, fend off junk mail etc.
Conference organisation is entrusted to the local convenor who has the responsibility and right to organise the conference according to his or her ideals - making as much use of other committee members, as they find useful. Abstracts are often published as a special issue of the Journal of Nannoplankton Research.
Whilst the European founders of the INA believed in just doing good
stuff for nannofossil science our American colleagues know that money
is necessary to achieve anything worthwhile. The Director of
Development is responsible for finding it and the INA foundation has
established a very useful fund for suporting the educational objective
of the society and particularly for sponsoring student attendance at
INA conferences.
Was INA run by a narrow Anglo-Dutch clique? That is not the way it ever felt from the inside, but broadening the spread of committe participation was something we have long felt was important. Woody Wise greatly increased US involvement but the INA council was still far from representative of the membership, hence the new bylaws provided for these new posts. They give nannoplankton specialists who are committed to the objectives of the association but do not have the time to take on major tasks a chance to influence and guide us. The members at large have also been proactive in producing items for sale such as the INA calendar (Giulana Villa) and some beautiful nano ornaments (Alyssa Peleo-Alampay).
