Archives as a source of ecological history: The Victor E. Shelford Papers as a case study

Background/Question/Methods

How does one go about developing a history of an organization? Where do you start? With press clippings? Internet searches? Public records? Within its own publications? With its founders? And with the founders, do you look through their formal publications? Their personal and official correspondence? There IS no one answer to the question. One source which can help is a formal archive. What IS an archive anyway? How is it created, and by whom? We will try to give some insight into the what, when, where and how of the type of archive most relevant to this exploration of, in this example, the Ecological Society of America.

Results/Conclusions

In its simplest form, an archive is a collection of documents relating to a person. Call it a box of old letters and papers, and you would be close. What makes it an archive, then? The simplest answer has to be that an archival institution, such as a university, has formally accessioned those papers, indexed them, and stored them under conditions where they are likely to be preserved for a lengthy period. Ideally, the archiving institution has also prepared and published or posted a description…general or detailed…of the sorts of items found within the archive. Using the University of Illinois archive devoted to Victor E. Shelford as an example, we find that it contains elements of almost ALL of the above materials. Shelford was one of the founders of the Ecological Society, and its first President. He published numerous books and papers in his lifetime, including several books which were widely used across the country. It is through these books, primarily, that he became known, at least by name, to most ecologists. However, it is among the early papers and correspondence of the ESA that we would expect to find things of interest which are not so widely known. And yes, the Shelford archive does contain several of the earliest society meeting programs, for example. It also contains correspondence among the several society founders and early officers, as well as between Shelford and scores of well known biologists…and not a few political figures as well. This is a good example of the value of an archive in general, as well as of great interest to the ESA, since understanding his career, goals, and personality help us to better understand how our organization came to be what it is today.