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It strikes me that the problem we have is a gradual reduction of members every year. We need to know which members we are losing. Is it the lower paid ones, the higher paid ones, or people all across the ranges of salaries? Personal experience (and therefore very subjective experience) suggests that in a lot of cases higher paid staff are not keeping up membership. If we lose too many of this category then we are losing those with skills & experience, those who can supervise chartership candidates, those who can provide training etc etc. I think the benchmarking exercise would be really useful. In terms of the training we have to go through to emerge as qualified and chartered librarians we could compare ourselves to eg architects and see what sort of salaries they command at the different stages of their career (and also what they pay to be members of the RIBA). A quick peek at the relevant websites reveals that RIBA membership is £205 for those qualified less than 5 years and £315 for those qualified more than 5 years. Architects also have to be registered with the Architects Registration board as far as I can tell and that costs several hundred pounds to register and then £70 a year as far as I can see. I'm sure salaries are much higher for architects on qualifying than for librarians, but really should there be qualified/ chartered librarians earning as little as £17k. Even in the public sector average starting salaries for graduates are apparently £19.7 See:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3890313.stm CILIP really does need to make more effort in this area and to make that effort more visible to its members. One problem if CILIP refused to advertise the jobs that were very poorly paid, is that the employers in question would just resort to other methods of advertising and possibly hire people with no qualifications or experience. I'm personally worried about the deprofessionalisation of the information sector. I believe that CILIP contributes to the fight against this deprofessionalisation and that chartership provides us with evidence that we should be considered at the same level as eg architects, doctors etc. There must be many invisible benenfits from CILIP; administering the chartership programme must cost far more than the fee passed on to those submitting for examination. Perhaps CILIP also needs to get better at "blowing its own trumpet" so that members realise the benefits they are getting. During the AGM I changed my mind about 5 times on how I was going to vote on this issue. I suspect without the flat fees CILIP has a difficult job ahead, but it also has a difficult job keeping the lower paid members signed up if flat fees are implemented. You're probably all bored with this by now, so I'll get down off my soapbox. Cathy ****************************************** Catherine Phillpotts BA MA MCLIP Teamleader Social Sciences Senate House Library, University of London Senate House Malet St London WC1E 7HU 020-7862-8449 [log in to unmask] www.shl.lon.ac.uk ******************************************