ABS Historian, Sue Margulis
When I first became the Society Historian in 2022, I looked up the duties of the Historian, and one of the primary responsibilities listed was to ensure that materials are deposited annually in the Society’s archive at the Smithsonian Institution. The truth is though, that this hasn’t been done in nearly 20 years. With the digitization of information, perhaps it seemed unnecessary. Nonetheless, the archive does exist, and I felt it was important to see what was there.
In July, thanks to funding from the Society, I had the opportunity to do something very few ABS members have done: I visited the ABS archive at the Smithsonian Institution. Although it meant leaving my house at 4:30 in the morning for an early flight to Washington DC, spending an entire day in the archive, and finally getting home around midnight, it was truly a fascinating experience.
What did I learn? Some of you probably already know much of this information, but some of it was quite eye-opening. For example, ABS was formally established as its own Society in 1964, but it has its roots many years before that, with AM Guhl (who would later become the Society’s first historian) invited in 1948 to present at a conference on methodology and techniques for the study of animal societies, co-sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the New York Zoological Society. The list of presenters includes many of the founders of the Animal Behavior Society. This group of scientists eventually established a section on Animal Behavior as part of the Ecological Society of America, and a division as part the American Society of Zoologists.
The founders of the Society recognized the importance of maintaining Society records in perpetuity and explored several options for establishing the archive. However an archive wasn’t established until 1984, when the relationship with the Smithsonian Institution was formalized, with support from then ABS past-president Devra Kleiman of the Smithsonian. Over the next 20 or so years, ABS Historians worked diligently to try and pull together all relevant materials – conference programs and abstracts, minutes of meetings, annual reports, newsletters. This Herculean task resulted in some 80+ boxes of archival materials at the Smithsonian. Obviously, I could not examine all these materials, so I requested a smattering of boxes (about a dozen) including the earliest and the most recent. I felt this would give me a chance to simply “dip my toe” into the historical waters of the Society to see what was at the Archive, and what was missing. My predecessors worked very hard to compile historical records, and I wanted to contribute to this effort.
Some of the materials I found were quite astounding. We need to remember that before the days of email, before the days of personal computers, all correspondence was on paper. In-person meetings took place once a year, at the annual meeting. Other correspondence was by what we now call “snail mail.” The archival material for some years included copies of every letter sent by the Society president or secretary. This included everything from “I’d like to join the Society – how do I do that” to “I didn’t get my latest issue of the Journal” to “Can you tell me why my dog sneezes.” These were carbon copies (for the younger folks out there, that is what “cc” stands for). In the annual report for 1982-3, then-secretary Sid Gauthreux reported handling some 100 letters with the Executive Committee and another 800 pieces of other correspondence. The Executive Committee meeting in 1982 was called to order at 9am with an agenda of 77 items (item #76 was “sigh of relief”) and adjourned at 11:17pm. Sid Gauthreux’s hand written notes get less and less legible as the meeting progressed.
The last deposit to the archive was in 2006. We began maintaining records digitally shortly after this time, with SPLTrak taking on this role in 2015. Fortunately, the Smithsonian can also digitally archive materials, so I have begun this process, but there are definite gaps in information. Between 2006 and 2010, the digital records are spotty at best. After 2010, and especially once we no longer distributed hard-copies of programs, the details of the conference – schedules, abstracts, and so on – are challenging to find. But, you can help! If you were an officer of the Society between 2007 and 2015, and have documents or records, hard-copy of digital, please let me know! If you have conference programs after 2006, please let me know! Although I have nearly all of them personally, I may be missing a few. Nothing would make me happier than to ensure that the complete history of the Society is maintained in a searchable and accessible way. I will be reporting on more of my archive finds in future newsletters. If you are interested in history of science, or just the history of the Society, the archive is a wealth of information, and it is accessible. Who knows what may be hidden in those 87 boxes?
The first members of the Society had to mail a check for their dues ($10, which was viewed as a bit pricey in 1965) to the Society’s treasurer:
Photo credit: Sue Margulis
This conference program from 1948 may represent the first time researchers in animal behavior truly came together as a group to share their work and ideas:
Photo credit: Sue Margulis