Paul,
Your question is very thought provoking. I can give you some probable reasons why the club here on Long Island is now defunct:
1. The Internet has partly supplanted the need of individuals with similar interests to get together to discuss their hobby;
2. Young people have been impossible to recruit for a number of reasons: insufficient time to devote to meetings; the leave-nature-along attitude today, or taboo on collecting live (or even dead) animals; the lack of training of natural history in universities (and consequently the great ignorance of most about our natural environment); the lack of access to the seacoast for many; and finally, the perception that existing clubs are retiree coffee clubs.
3. The failure of clubs to cater to all members' interests. Interest in shells ranges from the casual to the scientific, from micros to macros, and from marine to terrestrial. Unless a club can establish a program that includes everyone's interests, and allows full participation of its members, it will lose the disaffected.
I'd like to hear from members who are in successful, productive clubs.
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Callomon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, December 19, 2005 8:12 am
Subject: Decline of shell clubs
> Dear all,
>
> Are shell clubs in decline? Anecdotal evidence tends to suggest
> so. I have yet to talk to a fellow club president here in the USA
> who does not lament falling membership and gradual natural
> attrition. Recruiting new members seems a particular problem, and
> one has to wonder whether this is because clubs aren't reaching
> people or because the kind of young person who would join a shell
> club is no longer to be found.
> There are any number of theories about this, but it might not hurt
> to air a few more. So: is there a problem? And if so, can it be
> solved?
> PC.
>
> Paul Callomon
> Collections Manager
> Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
> Department of Malacology
> Academy of Natural Sciences
> 1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
> Tel 215-405-5096
> Fax 215-299-1170
> Secretary, American Malacological Society
> On the web at www.malacological.org
>
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