Hornaday, Beebe, Crandall, and More:
Archives at
the New York Zoological Society (1992)
Steven P. JohnsonNew York Zoological Society
Bronx, NY 10460
[Text as published in AAZPA/CAZA Annual Conference Proceedings, 1992. Since then the New York Zoological Society changed its name to the Wildlife Conservation Society and the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums changed its name to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. The text of paper has not been updated to reflect these changes or new editions of books, availability of internet resources, etc.]
Introduction
Last November, the Bronx Zoo received a survey form and letter from the National Zoo, asking for information on a reintroduction program managed at the Bronx Zoo, a program which was not represented in the National Zoo's reintroduction database.
The survey form asked in detail about the procedures used in the program. Were the animals trained prior to release? Did a veterinarian assess the animal before or after the release? Was any veterinary treatment available after release?
As happens in most institutions, the query was forwarded from the director to a curator for reply. Since the survey asked about the reintroduction of bison in 1907, however, the form was forwarded one more time, to the zoo archivist.... me. In addition to managing the NYZS archives, I also answer questions with an historical dimension, based on those archives. In this paper I use the bison survey question to illustrate the use of archives at the New York Zoological Society.
Archives are the non-current records or documents created or received and accumulated during the course of activity of an organization or individual, preserved because of their long term value. Most of these records are unpublished, but institutional archives also include publications issued by that organization. The NYZS archives include the NYZS Annual report, the Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society and it's successors, and Zoologica, but not publications of the National Zoological Park or San Diego Zoo.
Some of you may be familiar with a newer definition of the word "archive" from data processing. In data processing, "archive" refers to data maintained on disk or tape for backup purposes or inactive data or collections of compressed data files maintained for convenience in storage or transmission by modem. Despite their name, most data processing archives are usually not intended for the longlife we expect of paper records. Preserving computer files for the long term is a special problem for archivists, but it is not my topic today.
NYZS ArchivesWhen Vernon Kisling asked me to speak about the value of archives for this session, I first thought about the people and departments whose records make up the archives of the New York Zoological Society--the "Hornaday, Beebe, Crandall, and More" of my title.
In the vernacular, there is great stuff in the New York Zoological Society archives. Lee Crandall's references notes and correspondence from Management of Wild Mammals in Captivity are one example of great stuff. The Department of Tropical Research records are another example which demands the adjective great--they include William Beebe's field notes, expedition photographs, and specimen documentation, including hundreds of photographs and drawings. Some of the drawings and paintings had been published in Beebe's books and in Zoologica and Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, but these are the originals.
William Hornaday's correspondence and other records are probably the best known and most used part of the New York Zoological Society archives, because William Bridges used them extensively and referred to them in Gathering of Animals: an Unconventional History of the New York Zoological Society (1974). Hornaday's records date from 1895 to 1926, accumulated during his tenure as director and general curator of the New York Zoological Park.His records preserve a detailed picture of the Society's operations and the world of zoos, wildlife preservation, and the wild animal trade during the first quarter of this century. Hornaday's correspondence with Carl Hagenbeck, and other animal dealers and zoo directors, illuminates the history of the animal trade and provides data on animals which goes beyond the information on specimen registration records.
In addition to his official records as an NYZS officer, Hornaday left to NYZS his private conservation lobbying correspondence and the records of the Permanent Wild Life Preservation Fund, which he directed. He also bequeathed the PWLPF endowment to NYZS, where it formed the beginning of the NYZS conservation endowment.
In fact, Hornaday's role in the institutional culture of NYZS, and his large accumulation of records, are probably the best explanation why NYZS has a formal archives and most other AAZPA institutions do not. In the course of 97 years, NYZS has accumulated, selected, organized and preserved more than 750 linear feet of unpublished primary source materials or archives: minutes, correspondence, project files, drawings, photographs, and reports, in addition to the formal specimen records of the animal collection. Besides the records of the New York Zoological Park, the archives include the records of the New York Aquarium and Osborn Laboratories of Marine Science, Wildlife Conservation International, and its precursor, the Department of Tropical Research directed by William Beebe. A guide to the archives is available on request (Collins and Johnson, 1982).
Bison reintroduction questionThe bison reintroduction program survey struck me as a good example to mention in this talk because the bison recovery story is widely acknowledged as an example of zoos saving wildlife through cooperative captive breeding and reintroduction. Moreover, the anecdote illustrates two themes I want to mention.
First, the bison story suggests that archives and other historical sources can be of practical value in the ongoing work of an institution today! In this case, our archival records afforded a means of responding to an important survey, allowing the National Zoo to update a contemporary database.
Second, the bison data search illustrates how different types of published and unpublished sources are searched and used together to answer questions with an historical dimension. I began my search using published sources, which is recommended practice when researching questions with an historical dimension. Published sources are usually better indexed than unpublished sources. Further, published information is usually more dense, when compared to unrefined, unpublished information.
From an in house computer index to the Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society and other NYZS publications issued since 1895, I retrieved a reference to an article by Elwyn Sanborn on the shipment of the bison from the Bronx to Oklahoma (Sanborn, 1908).
The same database also provided a reference to J. Alden Loring's paper on the selection of the Wichita forest and game reserve as a bison range (Loring, 1906).
These two articles provided basic information on the reintroduction of the bison, but I wanted more information so I turned to unique, unpublished sources, guided by what I had learned in the public record.
Even in the absence of references, computerized or printed, logic led me to William Hornaday's Director's office correspondence. There I found an unexpected treasure, a four page handwritten letter from H. R. Mitchell to Hornaday, describing the shipping of the bison (Mitchell, 1907).
Mitchell was business manager of the New York Zoological Park and an old railroad hand. Thus, he used his specialized knowledge of railroad procedure and personnel to expedite the bison shipments. He worked with train crews to resolve mechanical breakdowns as they occurred on the journey from Fordham station in the Bronx to the station at Cache, Oklahoma, where the crated bison were moved to wagons for the next stage of their journey.
With this information in hand I was able to respond to the survey from the National Zoo. Just the same, I was not in a position to fill in all the blanks. For example, the survey asked if the animals were trained prior to release. Prior to transit, bison were "trained" to the extent that they were taught to move through cattle chutes so that they could be transferred to crates in horse cars without injury. However, this might not qualify as "training" in 1992, when the training question more often relates to food finding or climbing skills.
This question, as well as questions on veterinary assessment and treatment, required interpretation at the National Zoo. In order to provide a basis for interpretation, I supplied copies of the published articles and unpublished correspondence. I also sent a set of publications of the American Bison Society, the now defunct non-governmental organization which coordinated the efforts of zoos, private owners and government in the American bison reintroduction and recovery effort. Because of William Hornaday's activities in the American Bison Society, NYZS holds a quantity of that organization's records plus the undistributed stocks of annual reports. The survey completed, I reflect on what I had accomplished and how I had done it.
The value of archives
When archivists speak of the value of archives, we usually mention five categories of value based on potential uses of records: administrative value, legal value, fiscal value, informational value, intrinsic value, and evidential value. Any records in any format (paper, computer file, photographic negatives or prints, etc.) may have archival value when satisfying one of these criteria.
Among these values, "evidential value" is the only term which lacks an obvious meaning. Records of "evidential value" are those which document the administrative structure or functions of a record creating body, rather than the substance of its work. If records have evidential values, the records are important because of what they tell us about how organizations function, rather than what they tell us about, for example, an animal shipment. Most archival values are not nearly so subtle as "evidential values."
During my first two or three years at the Zoological Society, I was preoccupied with arranging and describing the archives, many of which I had moved from their unlikely sanctuary in the Monkey House basement. In those days, I took the value of the NYZS records largely as a matter of faith in archives. "Intrinsic values" were easy to spot--Theodore Roosevelt's signature in a guestbook or a handwritten letter signed by William Beebe, for example. As an example of informational value, I knew that Bill Bridges used Hornaday's records for much of Gathering of Animals. But I didn't expect another official NYZS history to be written anytime soon, and in the early days I received few other requests which might illustrate the other values of archives.
Ten years later, I've found that NYZS derives a variety of values from its archives, because the archives are managed for use rather than considered dead storage.
I've supplied records of fiscal value to inhouse accountants working on the depreciation of our buildings, including exhibits. If depreciation of collections had not been rejected recently as an accounting standard for non-profit institutions, we would all be spending much more time looking for fiscal value in correspondence with animal dealers and breeding loans agreements.
Legal values may be found in many non-current animal transaction records when they prove the captive born status of a species listed on CITES.
In general, however, it is the administrative and informational values which justify the ongoing operation of the New York Zoological Society archives.
The formal and informal project records from NYZS's long history of international conservation work is an information asset we repeatedly draw upon in building credibility for the institution and in answering questions about our involvement in countries where we have worked over periods of decades. Ray (1988) used Executive Committee minutes as well as the project files of the Wildlife Conservation International (WCI) division of NYZS and published annual reports in compiling a chronology of conservation activities at NYZS from 1895 to 1987. WCI field staff have used Fairfield Osborn's unpublished conservation files to locate elusive reports from wildlife conservation projects in Africa during the nineteen fifties. As yet unannounced and unpublished centennial projects draw further on the information in the archives.
What's Missing, Today and TomorrowAlthough there is widespread interest in zoo and aquarium animal records and growing interest in the history of zoos and animals in captivity and wildlife conservation, relatively few zoos have formal programs for preserving and using archives (Collins & Hamer, 1981; Kisling, 1988; Rohr, 1989).
When records of potential value are not evaluated and managed, they are most often found in basements, attics, closets, under stairs or worst of all, they are not found at all because they were consigned to a dumpster or a paper drive or the recycling bin. Lacking positive reasons to keep archives, shortage of space can be a compelling reason to destroy records.
Without active evaluation of records, it is also common to find that some records are kept far too long. In the course of my work, I have found--and destroyed--inadvertently preserved records of boat maintenance from the nineteen twenties and routine vendor correspondence from the nineteen thirties. These records occupied space which would better have been filled by the records now conspicuous by their absence.
For example, the NYZS archives do not include half of Charles Townsend's well known summaries of logbooks of whalers, compiled while he was director of the New York Aquarium. Contemporary whale researchers would find great value in these unpublished data in these summaries, if they still existed. Other gaps exist in animal department accession books, daily report books, and curatorial records. Raymond Ditmars is represented by less than two feet of files covering the years 1925-1934, although he was a curator in herpetology and mammalogy continuously from 1899 to 1942. Fortunately, missing information on animal accessions, for example, can often be filled in from other sources, such as specimen record cards, curatorial correspondence, or even a published note in an annual report or magazine.
ConclusionWhen Dan Wharton handed me the National Zoo's survey form on bison reintroduction in 1907, I was confident that I would find enough pertinent information to respond to the survey, even though I wasn't sure what I would find in the NYZS archives. Despite gaps, information can usually be pieced together from existing sources.
In looking down the road, I am less confident of how an archivist seventy-five years hence might respond if asked to give a paper on the records of Species Survival Plans of the nineteen nineties. It seems likely that future records generated by the Taxon Advisory Groups and Fauna Interest Groups will increasingly occur in computer readable forms, as data files, electronic mail, and other formats with an uncertain life span. Whether these records will survive or disappear depends, more than in the past, on our conscious efforts to manage new forms of information with regard to their long term value to our institutions. Since the problem will be shared by many institutions, and is not trivial, I suggest that AAZPA address the problem of long term management of current records and future archives on an association wide basis in the year ahead.
A sales list of publications on the management of archives is available on request from Society of America Archivists, 600 S. Federal, Suite 504, Chicago IL 60605, 312 922-0140.
Bibliography
American Bison Society. 1908-1931. Report of the American Bison Society.
Collins, Terry; Hamer, Allegra. 1981. Archives programs for zoological parks and aquariums. Pp. 99-102 in AAZPA regional conference proceedings, 1981.
Collins, Terry; Johnson, Steven. 1982. Guide to the archives of the New York Zoological Society. Bronx: New York Zoological Society.
Conway, William. 1974. A history of concern. Animal Kingdom 77(2):2-6.
Deiss, William A. 1984. Museum archives: an introduction. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.
Garretson, Martin S. 1934. A short history of the American bison. New York: American Bison Society.
Kisling, Vernon. 1988. American zoological park libraries and archives: historical considerations and their current status. Sci-Tech Libraries 8(4): 49-60.
Loring, J. Alden. The Wichita buffalo range: a report to the New York Zoological on an inspection of the Wichita forest and game reserve, in Oklahoma, to select a location for a buffalo range. Tenth annual report of the New York Zoological Society. New York: New York Zoological Society, 1906.
Mitchell, H. R, to W. T. Hornaday, 19 October 1907, 4 p. Incoming correspondence, Office of the Director, William Hornaday, New York Zoological Park, New York Zoological Society Archives.
Ray, Justina C. A chronological history of the conservation achievements of the New York Zoological Society, 1895-1987. Bronx: Wildlife Conservation International, 1988. 232 p.
Rohr, Linda. 1989. A survey of American zoo and aquarium libraries. Sci-Tech Libraries 9(4):75-84.
Sanborn, E. R. 1908. The national bison herd. Zoological Society Bulletin Number 28 :400-403, 406-412.
Last update: Written, summer 1992. Converted to html and posted, 1 Dec 2001. Links fixed, 7 February 2003.