In one sense I became president of ASIS by accident. Contacted in 1973 by the nominations committee, my experience was largely limited to the chairmanship of the Potomac Valley chapter. I was elected in what was the first and perhaps hopefully the last three way race, and election procedures that confidently pronounced that the individual receiving the larger number of votes would be considered elected had to be modified to deal with issues of majority and plurality. Although I had not served as a member of the board of directors, and such service should really be mandated for would-be presidents, I was sufficiently familiar with professional society organizational procedure through my earlier presidency of the Special Libraries Association. In fact, I am certain that my election stemmed primarily from my familiarity to members of ASIS who were also members of SLA, a percentage of the ASIS membership then estimated as an overlap of about 35%) and certainly an even larger overlap of the organization's leadership.
My own election also served to underline a certain irony. It was as president of SLA that I, together with the then president of ASIS, Joseph Becker, forged a proposal for the merger of the two societies. To this day I feel that the proposal made sense, and in fact it received majority support in both bodies throughout the discussion. The proposal ultimately failed because a substantial minority opposed the merger; a minority large enough to suggest that even if the merger were accomplished, splinter societies would immediately be started, and that would of course have negated the whole point of the merger. From my viewpoint the objections to merger were emotional and not substantive, and concerned issues such as whether there would be one or two advisory bodies of chapter and subject group representatives, or which name would take first billing in a joint entity. Both of these, and others, were issues that any society inevitably decides for itself once its membership is established. An initial name and structure can be established, but thereafter the members do whatever they want to. My presidency of the two societies (the only other individual to have served both groups was Herman Henkle) person-