FOREWORD to the 1999 Edition of these Guidelines

In 1998, the A.A.H.M. Council struck an Ad Hoc committee to revise these Guidelines. They had not been altered since they were first written in 1985. The original authors intended revisions to be the responsibility of the Committee on Meetings; however, that responsibility was forgotten when that Committee's site-selection function become more onerous in the late 1980s. The original responsibility of the Committee on Meetings was rediscovered in this recent exercise. The Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee to revise these Guidelines happens also to be serving currently as chair of the Committee on Meetings (1998-99), but there is no other overlap in membership on these two committees.

This document contains a summary of A.A.H.M. practices, offered as information to those who are charged with organizing annual meetings. We agree with our predecessors that its contents should be regarded as "guidelines" or suggestions, rather than "rules."

We recommend that future responsibility for annual reviewing and possible revision of these Guidelines be shared by the Chairs of the Program, Local Arrangements, and Book Exhibit Committees, who are well placed to identify problems, lacunae, and outdated information in their respective portions of the text. Their efforts could be coordinated by the Chair of the Committee on Meetings, the Secretary-Treasurer, and the A.A.H.M. Webmaster. Hopefully, a reasonable division of labor will make the task less daunting in the future.

We would like to thank the many people who provided useful information and helped us in these revisions, especially Jim Bono, Vin Cirillo, Eugene Connor, John Erlen, Gerald Grob, Stanley Jackson, Jodi Koste, Ed Morman, Todd Savitt, Lilli Sentz, Neale Watson, and Cherrilyn Yalin.

March, 1999
Ad Hoc Committee for Revision of the Guidelines
Jacalyn Duffin (Chair)
Barron Lerner
John Harley Warner