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Forest
History Society Research Resources
- FHS Archival Collections
The Forest History Society's Alvin J. Huss Archives
houses a wide array of "primary source" materials, including
such items as: photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, newsclippings, reports,
pamphlets, memoranda, correspondence, financial records, and audio-visual
materials recorded in a variety of formats. Most materials date from
the twentieth century. Descriptive "finding aids," summarizing
the contents of collections, are searchable in the archives, and a growing
number of them are accessible in electronic format through our web site.
- FHS Library Resources
The Society's Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Library maintains a diverse collection of published "secondary sources" relating to forest, conservation, and environmental history. Books, periodicals, maps, newsclippings, annual reports, newsletters, and reference works form the basis of the collection. The library specializes particularly in the history of logging, early forest management practices, and the forest products industry, but our unique collections support research in broad subjects across disciplines.
- FHS Searchable Databases
The Forest History Society has compiled several databases
that reference primary or secondary source materials pertinent to research
in topics related to forest, conservation, and environmental history.
Some of the databases are catalogs of various collections held by the
Society, and others serve as descriptive guides to resources elsewhere.
- FHS Oral History Interview
Collection
The Society's Oral History Interview Program
has produced more than 250 interviews conducted with individuals involved
with the management and use of forests and their related resources.
For the majority of interviews, sound recordings in various analog formats
(reel-to-reel recordings, stenorette tape recordings, cassette recordings,
etc.) complement typed transcriptions. More recently conducted interviews
have electronic transcriptions, some of which are accessible through
our web site from links in our Annotated Guide
to the FHS Oral History Collection.
- FHS Photograph Collection
The Society's collection of approximately 25,000 photographs, slides, negatives, and glass plates documents the history of human interaction with the environment. The main collection is indexed by subject and has a particular focus on the history of forests, the forest products industry, and lumbering and sawmilling practices. Auxiliary image collections created by companies or individuals document many of the same topics but are usually in the form scrapbooks or albums. Most images are in black-and-white print format and date from the 1930s to the 1960s.
- Digital Collections
As time permits we are digitizing some of our more unique historical items and presenting them as "digital collections," both in order to make them more readily available and to learn more about them from our users.
- U.S. Forest Service
History Collection
The Forest History Society has produced a searchable database
to a collection of historical materials amassed since the early twentieth
century by U.S. Forest Service employees working in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Forest Service History Collection
contains such materials as correspondence, memoranda, legislation, books,
periodicals, articles, pamphlets, and photographs. The collection, now
housed at the Forest History Society in Durham, N.C., has proven useful
for researchers and Forest Service employees interested in the administrative
history of the agency and the broader issues with which it has been
involved. The official archival Records
of the U.S. Forest Service are maintained by the National Archives.
- Centennial Forester
Collection
In 1946 the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and the American Forestry
Association began assembling a collection of photographs and biographical
sketches of foresters and conservationists to be housed at the Library
of Congress in Washington, D.C. The collection, named in honor of Gifford
Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, grew to include
portraits and biographies for over 1,000 individuals before additions
to the collection tapered off in 1950. At the November 2000 annual meeting
of the SAF in Washington, D.C., the Forest History Society began collecting
portraits of and biographical information about foresters and conservationists
whose careers have developed during the mid- to late twentieth century
to form a Centennial Forester Collection
modeled after the original Pinchot Collection at the Library of Congress.
We will accept contributions of portrait images and biographical forms
for this collection indefinitely.
- Canada's Forest History
Environmental history often transcends politically-designated geographic
borders and therefore sometimes demands an international perspective.
Having recognized this long ago, the Society has for many decades used
its program areas in Library and Archives,
Research and Publication, and Education and Outreach to develop resources
that support research pertinent to international environmental history.
Canada's forest history, especially, has
been significantly represented in our programming efforts.
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