The Forest History Society was founded fifty years ago through the combined efforts of industrialist Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser and American scholar of Scandinavian history Theodore C. Blegen. The original scope was narrowly defined as preserving the history of the American lumber industry through programs in archives, bibliography, and publication. During the first half-century, the Society's scope has broadened greatly to include forestry, land use, many elements of the environment, and also placed in a global context.
The Society is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, where it is affiliated with Duke University. Duke hosts a very strong History Department, an excellent School of the Environment (formerly School of Forestry), an Institute of Public Policy, Canadian Studies Center, and the Organization for Tropical Studies. These programs plus the University Press provide essential colleagial support for many of the Society's activities. Durham is also convenient to Washington, D.C., an added benefit to a national organization.
The Board of Directors is comprised of academics, resource professionals, and business leaders from America and Canada. The Board's primary role is to develop policies and priorities. The recently updated Long Range Plan includes the following goals: 1. Intensify the development of the Society's library and archival programs; 2. Increase the scholarly tone of the journal but also to develop publications for the general reader; 3. Develop educational programs for public schools, resource professionals and executives, and journalists; 4. Be responsive to international opportunities.
The approximately fifteen hundred members are drawn from the academic world, from among resource professionals, and from those who for a variety of reasons are interested in the general subject area. Over the years, as the general field of history more and more recognized the legitimacy of forest and conservation history, the percentage of academics among the membership increased to perhaps 50 percent of the total. At the same time, the numbers of those with a personal, rather than professional, interest declined. This latter decline in part is due to the increased rigor of scholarship in the Society's programs, making them of less interest to the "amateur." To counter this decline, the Board has approved new programs for the "general reader." The Forest History Society does not see itself as serving only the academy, and thus this balance of presentation between scholarly and popular will be an ongoing activity.
Since 1957, the Society has published a magazine under various names; by 1990, the name was Forest & Conservation History. In response to goal 2, F&CH was merged with Environmental History Review, published by the American Society for Environmental History, to become Environmental History. The January 1996 issue of EH was the first, and it is a quarterly. In appearance and content, EH fully meets the highest standards of historical scholarship. Overseas individual subscriptions are $41.
The changes in the journal's format and content over the years reflect the ongoing tension between attaining scholarly excellence and at the same time serving a broad audience. To North American historians, there is no longer a field of "forest history," having been incorporated into "environmental history," and academics who need to publish in order to advance in their professions are especially sensitive to which fields are "acceptable." Thus, not only were the general readers turning away, but authors who ordinarily had submitted articles were instead sending the same material to other journals. The fundamental deficiency was the decline in publishable material; for that basic reason, the Forest History Society negotiated with the American Society for Environmental History to copublish EH. The effect was immediate; EH will publish about sixteen articles each year that will be selected from as many as one hundred fifty submissions. The scholarly corner of the Society's program is now solid.
For the more general reader, the Society annually publishes Forest History Today, an attractively illustrated magazine. FHT also includes a report on the Society's finances and other topics of interest. In format FHT looks very much like Forest & Conservation History, which has been replaced by EH. However, the content is decidedly nonscholarly, although still authoritative. Articles tend to be short and well written, in contrast to standard academic writing. Short articles allow carrying a larger number, making it possible to have at least one about each North American region. The regionalism of the U.S. and Canada is legendary, and the general reader shows little interest in the "other" regions.
Also aimed at the general reader, but done in a way to be acceptable to the academics, the Forest History Society Issues Series includes historical overviews of today's contentious problems, such as wetlands, endangered species, and forest health. Published to date are studies of the American forest in general, Canadian newsprint, and medicinal plants of the forest.
The decision to produce the Issues Series was difficult to make, in that the Society might become perceived as an advocacy organization. From its inception, the Society has been nonaligned, at times an unpopular condition as advocates insist that the issues are too important to remain aloof. The Society aims to walk this fine line, remaining impartial, by publishing works of independent authors. The Society, itself, will not engage in policy analysis.
The educational program is wholly new and is beginning with the preparation of a teacher's guide for each Issues Series title. Thirty-four of the fifty American states require instruction about the environment, so the potential for service is great indeed. Furthermore, environment is taught as a science subject, leaving a broad entry for adding the historical dimension envisioned by the Society.
In addition to these new emphases, from its inception, the Society has engaged in archival and bibliographic collection. Its online database currently includes twenty-two thousand annotated citations to published materials and six thousand descriptions of unpublished collections held by more than four hundred institutions across North America. In addition its Southeast Asian bibliography contains nine thousand citations, and a Latin American compilation holds more than fifteen hundred. The database may be accessed via the Internet by using gopher software and directing it to:
iliad.lib.duke.edu
Then follow the menus:
Other Duke Resources
Forest History Society
For World Wide Web clients (other than Netscape 2.0) the URL is:
gopher://iliad.lib.duke.edu/11/eeOther_Duke_Resources/fhs
Not only is this valuable database available worldwide; it is used daily by Society staff. Questions at all levels of sophistication are handled by the library staff. A ten-year-old might want to know something about "conservation," a university professor might be planning a new book, a consulting forester might want to know historic tax policies in Bolivia for an USAID assignment. All inquiries are treated seriously, and responded to within staff capabilities. Often the best answer is to refer the questioner to another authority.
The Society's archives are rich in information, especially about twentieth century topics related to forest and conservation history. Included are copies of letters, memos, reports, diaries, ledgers and similar materials generated by any organization. The evaluation of such unpublished documents, prepared on a day-to-day basis, is the most important evidence that a historian uses. These "primary" documents reveal rather different stories than the "secondary" or published materials that ordinarily have been screened for policy conformance.
The major collections in the Society's archives are that of the American Forestry Association, founded in 1875 and the oldest conservation group in America. The American Forest Council is the forest industry's educational association, since 1941 developing materials that explain forest management for the general public. The National Forest Products Association has since 1902 been the industry's chief lobbyist. Finally, the Society of American Foresters, founded in 1900, represents the profession of forestry in the United States. Each of these collections require on average a hundred meters of shelf space, and each allow an investigator to trace the day by day evolution of a particular policy or practice.
The Research and Publication program seeks grants and contracts to support specific projects, such as the history of the U.S. Forest Service and similar topics. Most of this monographic literature has been published in cooperation with several university and trade presses; the Forest History Society has itself published the remainder. Among the most important publications have been reference works, such as the two-volume Encyclopedia of American Forest and Conservation History. Table 1 lists the Society's major publications.
The Society's seven program areas are supported by endowment earnings, grants and contracts, and contributions from its fifteen hundred members. Earnings from a $3.9 million endowment account for approximately 40 percent of the annual budget; the balance comprised of a mix of other sources.
It is a difficult time for all American nonprofit organizations, as reduced federal spending influences the entire economy. The loss of federal support requires that NGOs turn more and more to foundation and private sources, where the competition for funds has increased in step with federal reductions. Happily, the Society has a solid financial base and viable programs. Its second half century holds promise of an even wider range of service.