At the Bronx Zoo the approach of Spring brings warmer weather, and thus increasing crowds enjoying the park.  As the season progresses the Horticulture, Maintenance, and Operations Departments, as well as various others, all find themselves increasingly busy with the work of keeping the Zoo presentable.  A century ago these departments’ predecessors also joined the fight to maintain the grounds.  During the early 20^th Century, however, Director William Hornaday, treating the efforts to keep the Zoo clean like one of his conservation campaigns, gave what he called ‘The Rubbish War’ a hyperbolic air not seen in today’s spring cleanings.

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This Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating Grace Davall, who began her career in a secretarial role at the Bronx Zoo in 1923, at the age of 18, and rose through the ranks to become Assistant Curator of Mammals and Birds in 1952.  Upon her retirement in 1970 until her death in 1985, she was designated Curator Emeritus.  Continue reading →

Continuing our series on graphic design in letterhead, this installment features stationery from zoos and aquaria in the western United States during the mid 1950s – early 1970s.   (Letterhead from the late 19th and early 20th centuries is the subject of another post!)

Which is your favorite?  (You can right-click on the images to open them in new tabs and examine them more closely.)

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Genevieve Havemeyer-King, the National Digital Stewardship Resident here at the WCS Archives,  has recently published a two-part post at the Library of Congress’s digital preservation blog, “The Signal”:

Part 1: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2016/02/blurred-lines-shapes-and-polygons-part-1-an-ndsr-ny-project-update/

Part 2: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2016/02/blurred-lines-shapes-and-polygons-part-2-an-interview-with-frank-donnelly-geospatial-data-librarian/

Genevieve’s series of blog posts documenting her time at WCS continue here with a discussion of the complexities of preserving geospatial data and an interview with Frank Donnelly, the GIS Librarian at Baruch College (CUNY).

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Why?  According to William Beebe, why was “the question which makes all science worthwhile.” Why, for instance, do tinamous of the genus Tinamus have rough skin on their lower legs while tinamous of the genus Crypturus have smooth skin?  Why do hoatzin populations seem to gather in nodes rather than being found throughout tropical forests?

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We are so pleased to announce that we have received a grant from the New York State Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials to rehouse photographic negatives dating back to the founding of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium.

The $16,674 grant will enable us to rehouse glass plate and film negatives that would otherwise be susceptible to damage and deterioration. The images, dating from the Bronx Zoo’s founding in 1899 through approximately 1930, will be cleaned and properly rehoused for long-term preservation. Although the entire collection requires rehousing, this project focuses on the first 12,000 negatives in the collection of more than 70,000.

Three-toed sloth at the Bronx Zoo around 1907. WCS Photo Collection

For more on the grant and additional images from the collection, please see the WCS Newsroom, and we look forward to sharing news about the project as it progresses!

Genevieve Havemeyer-King, the National Digital Stewardship Resident here at the WCS Archives,  has another post  on the NDSR-NY Program blog:

http://ndsr.nycdigital.org/in-with-the-old/

This time Genevieve describes some of the challenges of selecting born-digital materials and transferring them to the Archives for the NDSR pilot project.

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In the 20^th Century, before the internet became ubiquitous, an organization’s written correspondence was one of its primary points of contact with its partners, suppliers, and the public.  Accordingly, stationery became an important medium for graphic design.  The Wildlife Conservation Society Archives contains numerous pieces of correspondence with striking, beautiful, or amusing examples of letterhead design.

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We are very pleased to report that we have received a Preservation Assistant Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities! This grant will support a general preservation assessment of the WCS Archives film collection, which contains approximately 2,200 film prints created by WCS zoo, aquarium, and field conservation staff over the twentieth century. A preservation consultant will conduct a formal assessment of the film collection and its storage environment in order to inform the Archives’ goals of creating a sustainable preservation plan for the collection and making it accessible.The assessment will support the Archives’ future ability to budget and plan for the collection’s rehousing and stabilization and determine options for the collection’s future accessibility.

We look forward to keeping you updated as the assessment gets underway this year!

For more on the NEH’s recent awards announcement, see here.

We are delighted to report that the WCS Archives has been awarded $60,237 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to process 13 important collections from the Archives. Among these are New York Zoological Society (NYZS) President Fairfield Osborn records and World’s Fair records, 1935-1967; Bronx Zoo General Curator Lee S. Crandall records, 1903-1969; NYZS Conservation Department records, circa 1969-1979; and NYZS Education Department records, circa 1967 to 1982.

In short, this project’s goal is to provide access to unprocessed and unexposed collections that document the mid-twentieth-century American environmental and wildlife conservation movements; reveal the evolution of exhibit design and animal care in zoos and aquariums; and provide exceptional glimpses into both zoo- and conservation-based activities in the United States. Together these collections cover pivotal events in the history of WCS that also represent important moments and trends in the cultural and scientific histories of New York City, the US, and the world.

The project will run from June 2016 to June 2017, and we look forward to sharing news and finds with you as the project progresses!