OPS 3-1
Taking historical records online: ESA's evolving digital footprint

Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Exhibit Hall, Sacramento Convention Center
Sally L. White, Morrison, CO
Robert K. Peet, University of North Carolina
C. Susannah Tysor, Biological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Background/Question/Methods

When the World Wide Web went public in April 1993, ESA was among the early adopters of this new communication format. The first ESA website was online in January 1995. The Historical Records Committee (HRC) soon added a history component, which introduced ESA’s origins and provided access to detailed lists of the Society's officers, sections, chapters, committees, awards, and meetings in table form. These records were updated regularly and constituted the core of the history website, as they still do today.

With the ESA Centennial approaching, the HRC has been engaged in promoting awareness of ESA’s history in relation to the history of ecology and its practitioners. In 2008, HRC began exploring ways to communicate the relevance of history and historical records to the rest of the membership, with an eye to extending that communication to the public at a future date. HRC continues to encourage sections and chapters to explore their own history and develop timelines. 

Results/Conclusions

HRC's initial efforts at creating engagement of the broader membership were boosted by a booth at the 2010 annual meeting and subsequent meetings. Use of Twitter (initiated August 2012) and launch of new website with interactive timelines based in Tiki-toki timeline software show promise as techniques to generate interest in history and to drive traffic to a newly renovated ESA history website launched March 3, 2014. Available website visitation statistics before and after are used to demonstrate effects of various tools. Our expectation is that using these tools together will enable HRC to build and maintain enthusiasm for ESA's history up to and beyond the 2015 Centennial celebration and that the ESA history website will ultimately become a significant resource for future researchers.