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Virginia Wood and Dr. Robert Weeden
No full textVirginia "Ginny" Wood and Dr. Robert "Bob" Weeden oral history interview as conducted by Roger Kaye and unknown female.
This interview mainly discusses the Conservation Movement in Alaska and the Alaska Conservation Society.1
National Heritage Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oral History Program
Narrator/USFW Retiree: Virginia "Ginny" Wood and Dr. Robert "Bob" Weeden
Date: June 09, 2006
Interviewed by: Roger Kaye and Female
Roger Kaye: I am Roger Kaye, this is Virginia Wood and Dr. Bob Weeden
Virginia Wood: Ginny.
Roger Kaye: We are here on June 9, 2006, and this will primarily be a dialogue between Ginny and Bob primarily about the early years of the conservation movement in Alaska.
Ginny Wood: Do you want the revised version!
Female: No, no --- no revisionist history here!
Roger Kaye: Well, Ginny, we've interviewed you several times about your background and your role in ACS [Alaska Conservation Society], and so what I'd like to do is ask Bob to talk about his perception of how and why it was formed and his early involvement in it. From there, we'll maybe discuss some of the issues that you two worked on together, right here in this house. Bob.
Bob Weeden: The Alaska Conservation Society was the first statewide conservation organization in Alaska that could claim to be both statewide and contemporary, modern, in its view of what conservation meant. It was also the first time in my life when I was truly an adult, because I was just out of school, had been in school for 21 out of 26 years, and finally was ready to join real life and somehow also ready to join some kind of activist organization of dealing with nature.
Roger Kaye: Why, can I ask you why did you... Most professionals aren't worried about activism, they just want the job, but what made you different?
Bob Weeden: Oh, I don't know, I honestly don't know what makes anybody the way they are. I guess I've always wanted to be involved in community, whether it's big or little community affairs. As a graduate student, you're kind of focused on you own self, it's a very selfish time of life, and you're trying to get the skills to cope. Finally, when I got to be a big boy and Judy married me and we came up north to have a family, it seemed like it was time to act like an adult and part of that is being an active citizen. I mean I guess that just was in me, I don't why. It just was going to be expressed somehow.
But I was going say that ACS started in late 1959 to early 1960, and had a 20 year run. I think, among other things, it proved that for the first time that there was, and is, a constituency to speak out for conservation, for wild things, for nature in Alaska. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, newspapers don't show it much, but it's there. 2
Another thing it showed was that a conservation organization, once it gets started, will collect friends really rapidly if it has a good character and a fairly strong character.
The ACS character was really formed by the Fairbanks group, which was the first of 10 or 11 chapters eventually. We were formed by a group of scientists and a group of passionate citizens who understood why the scientists were saying what they were saying. It all became a collective of people where the common denominator was the love of outdoors, however you expressed it, whether you loved skiing or abhorred it or whatever, it didn't matter, it was there in some form.
That, plus a respect for science, or a knowledge of what it could do, set the character of ACS so that we were forever doomed, you might say, to want to get some facts about what was going on. Which isn't always necessary or obviously done in conservation work. Sometimes you just take a line and you pursue it, knowing you are going to compromise in some direction anyway. But you begin by being outrageous, not worrying where the chips fall, and then fall back to something that you've hoped to get all along.
But our style was to kind of build up slowly, be a little bit deliberate, a little bit, "Umm, yeah, well, no," you know, kind of, "Well this is on the one hand, and here's on another hand, and everybody's got at least two hands."
It was slow and cumbersome, and I think we paid for it in someways during the D2 affair, when the power and the actions in Washington, D.C., and we weren't quite taking the line that the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society and the Alaska Coalition were taking. But I think in terms of homegrown organization whose focus was not as the Sierra Club was or Wilderness Society, was not nationwide preservation issues, but living in Alaska with nature. It seems like we really fit the bill.
Well, then life matured around us. Nature is changing all of the time and society is changing and it's hard to keep, but the ACS finally came to the end of its' road as a collective umbrella organization exactly 20 years after it formed. Now many of the chapters that were formed still go on, because we insisted that they be incorporated themselves, have their own officers, raise their own money. Which was a stroke of brilliance, which we didn't know about, but it was, because when the umbrella dissolved, the shaft was still there and people put their own sunshade on it.
We had chapters, gosh Ginny correct me, but Fairbanks and Anchorage, Kenai sold out, now Homer, Kodiak, Haines, Skagway, Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, and Ketchikan. So, there are at least those 10.
Ginny Wood: Yeah.
Bob Weeden: It was a very widespread organization. And as I say, in many of those places the folks were similar. A little knot of conservationists would collect around one kind of renegade unafraid agency person, whether is was a Will Troyer or a Dave Spencer or whoever it was, wherever it was, somebody was willing to kind of get 3
involved and people would collect around her or him and away you'd go, Dixie Baade in Ketchikan, obviously.
Anyway, so that's kind of what ACS is run in Alaskan history. We lost out finally, you might say, if it was a competition at all. We lost out because we decided at the very start that there was a joy and a benefit in being a volunteer organization. And except for struggling to pay a half-time executive secretary, Tina Stoneroff and a couple of others, we remained a volunteer organization. And frankly, when we pitted say our public outpourings with those of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, which we helped to start, and the Alaska Center for the Environment in Anchorage and Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, all of those had core staff, sometimes one person, sometimes one and a half, two people as they were able to build. Eventually, the Alaska Conservation Foundation and the Alaska Environmental Assembly began taking over the coordinative function that ACS and its' yearly meetings had always had. But then there was money available to get conferences together anywhere, usually Anchorage and sometime Juneau. So some of our key functions were taken over by the really hardcore power of staffing. Now, in some ways, the staff always is in danger of taking over from the volunteers. They are the ones that spend all day, every day thinking about something, they are the ones that have the arguments in hand. Pretty soon everybody is tugged along like the cars on a freight train and ex-staff members are the engine. That's like any benevolent dictatorship, that's great when it works. It's not so great if it doesn't work, because then you don't have the backup volunteers. But anyway, ACS took one road and came to the end of that road for various reasons.
Ginny Wood: Well, I think one of the reasons was is that we operated out of livings rooms with a Camp Denali hand-cranked mimeograph machine.
Bob Weeden: Gestetner!
Ginny Wood: Yeah! We didn't even have telephones where we lived, if you lived out of town, which almost everybody did. We would meet at the university once a week and nobody stopped us, now they would, least of all the professors would let us use a classroom. But I think it was we realized that we still had money, more money when we started. What was it, 2,500.00 for? Award for being the best small environmental organization. We still had money in our treasury, so we just divided it up between the others.
Roger Kaye: Well, you know, it was my impression, being a member of both and being very young, that ACS was very professional, very academic, very cautious in the stands it took. Where the Environmental Center was more appealing to some of us younger folks because it was less patient. Is that your impression?
6
Bob Weeden: Oh, I think that was true, but especially in Fairbanks and to some degree in a few other places. But when you come to Sitka, for example, it was not a very patient group there. They wanted to go "gung ho" as far as we were concerned that's great, I mean we weren't selling patience, we were selling results.
Ginny Wood: The last chapter that organized was Anchorage.
Roger Kaye: Is that right?
Ginny Wood: Yeah, it was started more in Fairbanks and in some of the small communities, and always started with the, "What's the fire in your backyard and what are people worked up about?" If they don't have that, everybody has too many organizations they have to belong to anyway. We didn't ever proselyte, but sometimes we'd send plenty down if we... Well, I remember, they were going to start one in, it wasn't Homer, on the way to Homer...
Bob Weeden: Kenai?
Ginny Wood: Yeah.
Roger Kaye: Kingfisher?
Ginny Wood: Yeah, and that was with Gordon Wright, who was a conductor. We said, "Is anybody going to go down?" And he said, "Well, I will." And we said, "How much money will you need?" He said, "Well, $15.00 for hamburgers and I'll ride my bicycle."
Roger Kaye: Is that right! Well tell me, in Fairbanks here, what were the galvanizing issues that brought you folks together?
Ginny Wood: First it was establishing... that's where we all kind of met and decided when we were asked to testify by a professor at the university just a year after statehood, and it was, 'What were the establishments of the Arctic Refuge?" It wasn't the 1002 area then, that was not the issue. It was whether we should... That's when we all got together.
Bob Weeden: Yeah, yeah. And our very first three major issues were not local Fairbanks issues at all, they were kind of half of the state issues. They were the northern half of the state, because it was AEC out at Point Hope with Project Chariot, and it was Rampart Dam, and it was the Arctic National Wildlife Range and Polar Bears. So yeah, we didn't really start as a local, let's say 'don't pollute the Chena River or quit mining on the Fingers Creeks or something like that.' We started with issues that were distant but big and seemed important to us.
Roger Kaye: So, for the Arctic Refuge, you hadn't been there Bob?
Bob Weeden: I never, no, I hadn't even been there. 7
Roger Kaye: You probably didn't see yourself benefiting from it. What motivated you to get involved in protecting this remote place?
Bob Weeden: I was at a point where I was just so enthralled with Alaska, the idea of Alaska rather than the knowledge of it. But my idea of Alaska was it's a wild country. And just coming to this place and realizing that there are people who didn't want it to stay wild, that really affronted me. So I began defending whatever seemed to need defending, and I was happy to have other people take the lead and tell me what was needed. You know, whether it was Les Verick and Don Foote, then company over in Point Hope, or whether it was the Murie's. I had met both Olaus and Adolph and Mardy, and of course we knew Brina Kessel and George Schaller. So, just knowing those people, it was okay to say, "Yeah, me too."
Roger Kaye: So, let me ask you Bob, you're a new employee with the state Fish and Game, newly established state that is adamantly against a federal reserve in northeast Alaska, that's strongly against the Arctic Refuge. What problems did that cause for your career, both psychologically for you to deal with it and politically?
Bob Weeden: Well that particular issue didn't cause me any real anguish. As a young biologist within Fish and Game, it didn't bother me if the governor was being silly and opposing any such thing, any such action by Fred Seaton.
It was okay as long as Fish and Game was saying what it was saying. Which was that it obviously couldn't say it was okay to have the Arctic Wildlife Range, but they were just very, very quietly voicing concerns about what would happen if it were developed for mineral or oil and gas. And then also asking questions about access, because they were concerned about maintaining access for hunting, especially hunting, some fishing. But Fish and Game didn't seem to worry about what I did in ACS at that time, that came nine years later and came down kind of hard because things had gotten more politicized by then. But I was okay with that, and I felt that I guess somehow I had the wrong-headed opinion that if I was interested in saving wildlife habitat, that was a good thing to do for Fish and Game. Even if it meant maybe a few hunters not having all of the access they wanted.
Ginny Ward: But remember, we didn't have to worry too much about access unless you had an airplane, and there weren't enough people who owned airplanes.
Roger Kaye: And the balloon-tired Super Cub was barely getting started in those days.
Ginny Ward: Well, I think that the hunting and fishing people thought, "Wow!" I know one person that turned out to be very much against taming the Arctic, but he started out being with us because he said, "We want to go hunting where there aren't going to be a half a dozen other people shooting out rifles where we are." But see, the road system hadn't even hardly been started then. So the idea that you kept something wild, and there wasn't any village except one Eskimo village, which we weren't opposed 8
to it. Just the idea of the frontier and, of course, the funny part of the thing, a frontier is something where you're pushing civilization further and further. It's not the cowboys or the Indians, it's civilization always wanting to push the frontier, but the idea of having space where there weren't any... Everybody probably then had come up when someplace was getting to crowded or noisy or too many other hunters where they wanted to go. So the idea that there would be a place that was hard to get to and it just bred animals, and there wasn't anybody to object. There were no minerals, no mining, no city, one Eskimo village, and they lived off the sea --- that's all the habitation there was, so you weren't...
Other person: No oil companies?
Ginny Ward: No oil companies, they hadn't discovered oil.
Roger Kaye: You know, that's interesting Ginny, you mentioned the frontier, and both of you have written extensively on the idea of the frontier and whether this venerated self image Alaskans have is really appropriate up here. Bob, what do you think about that?
Bob Weeden: I started off running to be in the frontier. I mean, here I am, a suburban kid in Massachusetts, growing up with probably an overdose of Zane Grey, and I really wanted to come west. I mean, that's where my heart was and I wanted to be, I thought, in the frontier, because I kind of pictured myself at the edge of this frontier, so-called, looking ahead to the place where people hadn't been yet. But what I discovered when I got up here is that there's a whole lot of stuff going ahead where that wave is hitting the sand and a lot of things are churning up, and they're not all together pretty. The frontier, as I understand it now, wherever it exists, still in Australia or in Siberia or in the Canadian north or in Alaska, it exists primarily as a facade to cover greed.
Ginny Ward: That's good.
Bob Weeden: It's touted as 'come visit the frontier' as the image for the tourists to get. But the people who live here fight like heck to change it into something that's not a frontier. I mean they want all of the banks, they want all of the Fred Meyers, they want all of the Home Depots, they want all of this stuff. They want access to everywhere, airplanes everywhere, snowmobiles everywhere. They don't want the frontier, what they want is the opportunity to make it. I found that to be very discouraging, and it still is, but you know, it's part of the...
A person who is daring and adventurous and has courage and who wants to be in a place where you can take risks with little capital, not have to be a banker taking risks with five billion dollars in your pocket, you go out and do it on your own. That's the kind of person that will come to a place that's called a frontier. And when they get there, the main thing is to make a stake, to take the chance to make it. And if you get frustrated meanwhile, then you get angry, and people who are opposing you when you say, "Hey, all I've got to do is get another road out here, I know we'll find the next big copper mine. I mean, it's just si
Internview with Stewart Branborg, March 3, 2003, by Roger Kaye (also present: Mrs. Branborg)
No full textOral history interview with Stewart Branborg. Roger Kaye was the interviewer.
Stewart Brandborg was a former Conservation Director of the National Wildlife Federation.
Name: Stewart Brandborg
Keywords: History, Biography, Congressional operations, Connecting people with nature, Forest conservation, Human impacts, Parks, Subpolar environments, Wilderness, Olaus Murie, Howard Zanhiser, Mardy MurieINTERVIEW WITH STEWART BRANBORG
MARCH 3, 2003 BY ROGER KAYE
(Also present, Mrs. Branborg)
MR. KAYE: This is an interview with Stewart Branborg conducted March 3, 2003 in
Darby, Montana by Roger Kaye. Stewart, thank you so much for doing this with me
today. I’d like to ask you to begin with a brief biographical sketch of your background,
where you are from, and how you got into this wilderness work.
MR. BRANBORG: I was raised in a family with a mother and dad who had a great
appreciation for wildlife and wild country. They took me and my sister on major
expeditions into the wilderness of Idaho and western Montana. This partially, or
substantially, I would say, because of my Dad’s service for forty old years in the U. S.
Forest Service here in the Bitter Root. He was Supervisor for twenty years. I was
influenced by a fine biologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, William Jelison, who
took young people, a group of young men into the woods and on to the ranges of our
wonderful game animals. I decided to take up Wildlife Biology. I attended the University
of Montana for my undergraduate work. I became involved with field studies, range and
timber surveys. I had the opportunity to live on wilderness lookouts for a couple of
years. All of this I grew to value more and more through the years. In that process I was
invited to be part of a Mountain Goat life history study. I picked up on that in 1947.
During the next seven years, I devoted a major part of my time research while attending
the University of Idaho, Wildlife Research Unit. It was with the Fish and Game
Departments of Idaho and Montana that I worked on Mountain Goat studies. I had
become an area game Biologist for the northern part of Idaho and I was offered a job with
the National Wildlife Federation in 1954 by Charles Callison, the then Conservation
Director. That took me in to four and a half years of legislative work with Callison
working in all areas of conservation. Particular areas of concern with wildlife and of
course very strong support for the Wilderness bill offered by the Wildlife Federation, lead
by Callison. This put me in contact with Howard Zanhiser in about 1955. I became a
member of the governing council in 1956, of the Wilderness Society. Then, as a part of
the Executive Committee, I worked closely with Zanhiser. I was given great latitude and
freedom to pursue the Wilderness bill in support of the Zanhiser campaign. Indeed the
Wildlife Federation was one of his stalwart organizations that did much to promoting
understanding of the Bill. That took me through some four years with the Federation. In
1960, when the Federation became embroiled in a controversy, Callison and others within
my friendship circle departed. I went to the Society and asked for a job. Zanhiser
encouraged me to be in touch with the then President Harvey Broom. It was decided that
if I could make my magnificent salary of $8000.00 through use of direct mail and other
skills that I had captured at the Federation, I could go to work. So, I was enlisted for a
position as Director of Special Projects, I think the title was. From that after a couple of
years I became Associate Director under Zanhiser and when he succumbed in 1964, in
May, I was appointed to succeed him. The rest is history.
MR. KAYE: So you were Director of the Wilderness Society then?
MR. BRANBORG: I became his replacement in May of 1964, on the eve the final
signing of the Bill in September. It was my task at that point…we had waged this long
campaign from 1956 to 1964. There were seventeen Congressional hearings. There was a
strenuous effort of organize grass roots people for the wilderness cause and in support of
the Bill. It was my task to make people aware that in this great accomplishment of
setting the national policy in a preservation program we had only included some eight
million acres in the wilderness system. All the rest had to come through the laborious
process of public hearings, local studies, the passage of proposals up through the
hierarchy in the agencies and Congress. There would again be a round of hearings to see
the inclusion of these areas into the wilderness system. So that took me into
implementation and what I feel was my contribution; in organizing grass roots teams in
some forty states, in support of wilderness.
MR. KAYE: When you were with the National Wildlife Federation as Conservation
Director you were their representative on the refuge issue. What were some of the things
that you did with the Wildlife Federation in support of the campaign to establish the
Arctic Refuge?
MR. BRANBORG: I of course had fallen under the influence of Howard Zanhiser,
Callison at the Federation, and the Muries. Olaus had come to the University of
Montana in the 1940s to a northwest section meeting of the Wildlife Society. Here was
this sweet, humble epitome of a fine biologist.
The infusions from Olaus and Zanny I think crystallized by thinking about the
rich experience I had had in the backcountry. Those months on the lookout, and working
on trail and telephone line and wild country, and the great trips that I had had with my
family. It gave a framework for something that was deep in my psyche, my life. But
here it was brought together that needed our best effort to realize protection of all of the
unique things that we had experienced in the wild setting. I was working under Callison
on legislation, on educational campaigns. I am sure that part of my job was to make
contact with those members of Congress and their staffs to give them background on the
Arctic Range, and to support this effort. Of course in effective lobbying, the best job you
can do is to say, “Here in Olaus Murie. Here is Mardy Murie.” I had the realization of
the value of those people, so wherever we could convene good, open minded staff people,
members of Congress, House or Senate, we would do that. That was my expertise, not
that I had fully accomplished all that I ultimately as a base of my competence as a
lobbyist. I know that these people had touched me, and as a representative of the
Federation, I could speak with real conviction and eloquence because of my tie to these
spirited people.
MR. KAYE: Interesting! Were the people, the legislators and so on that you lobbied
touched or influenced my the Muries and their philosophy about wilderness?
MR. BRANBORG: Some were. The John Sailers, the Lee Metcalfs, just to name a
couple. In that period, conservation and the environment were not popular causes. You
introduced yourself with your card. The best way to get into a Congressional office was
have people call from the home state, or district saying, “we’re sending in Steward
Branborg to discuss this issue with you.”
MR. KAYE: Oh really?
MR. BRANBORG: I had a lot of background in doing that. So if I really wanted to get
in I would call the local affiliate of the Wildlife Federation; a Sportsmen’s group and say,
“Would you mind writing and or calling that office and telling them we have this
important issue to bring to them?” That would prepare the groundwork. But at that
time, when you walked in you didn’t necessarily get a warm reception if you didn’t have
that kind of introduction. But there were those, lets say epitomized by John Sailor, who
embraced the concept. He knew it and he felt it. And so he would steep in the presence
of Olaus, and Zanny and Mardy. He savored them for what they stood for as people,
and their testimonials. He loved what they spoke for. He sensed the values that they
represented. Some others later, the Udalls, they were good. Senator Nelson was good.
Hubert Humphrey in Minnesota, the first introducer of the Wilderness Bill on the Senate
side. These people had the feeling. They had the measure of the quality of these spirited
folks who spoke for the wilderness. And they themselves sensed what we valued.
MR. KAYE: What did you do as far as your position with the Wildlife Federation to
encourage members to write their Representatives and get involved? Did you have a
campaign to involve members?
MR. BRANBORG: There was a very strenuous campaign particularly as we went into
the hearings for the Wilderness Bill. It was outreach, mobilizing people. In Idaho, as a
matter of fact I was assigned to go with Ted Trueblood with my 35mm slides on the life
history of the Mountain Goat. We held meetings at the Rotary and the schools all the
way from southern Idaho up to Sand Point and the Canadian line in every community we
could reach. It was just proselytizing for the Bill, explaining why it was so very
important to gain its passage. But in every instance, when there was a field hearing, we as
the Wilderness Society would go into the grass roots communities, bring together those
who shared this concern about wilderness. That concern had been nurtured through a
series of mailings that Zanhiser had engineered from Congress, to the citizens using the
mailing list of the Wildlife Federation and most of the conservation groups. They
numbered into the hundreds of thousands as I recall. The Federation was some three
hundred thousand. And there was Audubon, the Sierra Club, the National Parks
Association and other groups. Everybody on those lists had received these descriptions
of the Bill, its purposes, the rationale for its passage, the speeches that were made by
Sailor and Humphrey upon introduction. People had had repeated mailings saying, ‘here
is the Wilderness Bill. Here is the effort that we’re making. Here is why people from all
over the country must be in touch with their members of Congress to voice their
support.’ It was that foundation that gave us the starting point.
MR. KAYE: Was this the same approaching, but probably on a much smaller scale in
your advocacy for the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?
MR. BRANBORG: I think with the Arctic Wildlife Refuge of course you focused on the
key committees in the House and Senate. You focus on those members who will be
friendly. You do that systematic approach. You call and mail to your membership out in
that state, and the key leaders. You say, “Here’s the Arctic. Here’s what it means. Here
are the magnificent dimensions of what it represents for wildlife and wildness.” Then you
have those people apply words of encouragement and pressure to those who are on that
Committee. Of course you are watching that vote. You are going in from the Washington
level to say, “How’s the Congressman doing? What will the Senator do on this?” You are
talking to staff. You are talking to the member. You’re walking with the member to the
House floor or Senate floor. You are catching him wherever you can. But you’re nailing
down his vote. I am damnably sure that was my job on the Arctic, along with Callison
and Zanhiser. The Muries of course were not in the Washington scene except when they
came to visit. I think C. R. Goudermooth, the Wildlife Management Institute, Ira
Gabrielson, I think they were fully in ownership of this campaign. You probably read in
the context of this documentation their testimony. They were working with Zanny, with
Callison in coalition.
MR. KAYE: The document that you point out is a hearing record for a Senate testimony
that you gave on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation in 1959, recommending the
establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In reading through this, one thing
that interested me was that it was very eloquently written. You are representing a group
that is largely hunters and hunting interests, yet you don’t focus on that as being the
value of setting this place aside.
MR. BRANBORG: I believe that’s because of my own personal feeling and love for the
living creature. The appreciation emanates I believe, from my parents. But having come
out of Wildlife Management schools you know the heavy emphasis on harvest. Having
survived with Annalee on Elk and Deer meet through the winters, and being a hunter, I
was increasingly appreciative of the living creature. While I had to represent the interests
of the hunting community and recognize appropriateness of hunting in specific places, I
didn’t feel in my heart that this was the function of the Arctic; to provide hunting
opportunities any more than any of us emphasized recreation.
MR. KAYE: What did you see as the primary value of what became the Arctic Range?
MR. BRANBORG: I believe I saw through the eyes of Olaus and Mardy the
magnificence of the area, the rich community of wildlife and this spacious, endless
panorama. And here was the community of life and this spectacle, this museum. These
people were so articulate and so persuasive that that influence came on what I had had as
a kid and as a young biologist in the field and it coalesced with all of the things in my
background to make me see that in the wild untrammeled setting we had things that far
transcended the human experience of taking an animal or indulging in one kind of
recreation or another. Putting oneself in that setting as an observer who traveled as
quietly and unobtrusively as he could, but to savor it, to measure it, to watch it and above
all, to leave it untouched as much as humanly possible.
MR. KAYE: In your testimony to the Senate in 1959, you talked about the importance
of an area, “free from man’s domineering influence.” Tell me what you meant by that in
the context of the Arctic Refuge.
MR. BRANBORG: Significant signs of course, of human presence. Really, I get down
to any signs of human presence. What I was thinking about then, I can’t bring back. But
basically, leaving the setting without any signs of having been there, as much as possible.
And I think that is incumbent upon us. And I think that’s the test that we face now.
How do we give support to wilderness with a public that says ‘this is the ultimate
criterion, we will come, we will savor, we will indulge ourselves, but we will leave it
basically untouched’. Well of course it’s almost impossible to not leave some sign. But I
think that that is what I felt at the time, as much as I can project into that time fifty years
ago almost.
MR. KAYE: Your quote, “free of man’s domineering influence’ is very similar to the
Wilderness Act statement of ‘wilderness is in contrast where man and his works
dominate”. It seems like your advocacy for the Arctic Refuge and the Wilderness Act
was very much the same.
MR. BRANBORG: Undoubtedly, because I had been one of the early readers of the
Wilderness Bill drafts. Zanhiser was leaning on me to look for imperfections as he was
looking for people like you in the agencies. There were Dick Griffith, and people in the
Forest Service and many different disciplines to whom he presented the draft of the
Wilderness Bill and asked that they read it and study it. He wanted them to refine the
language and make it as good as they could for the purpose of the wilderness. By this
time almost on the eve of the introduction of the Wilderness Bill, right in this period, I
had been exposed to those words and those thoughts, most of which had fallen from
Zanhiser’s good mental process to the tablet where he did his first draft of the Bill. That
stuff was being fed into my system.
MR. KAYE: I noticed you used the word ‘wildness’ as an adjective, as a descriptive of
the values of this place in some of your writings. Tell me what you meant by ‘wildness’,
and what some of the parts of it are.
MR. BRANBORG: Of course, coming on the scene as a visitor, watching the land within
vision of the magnificent glaciated mountain basin, the meadow, the lichens the mosses,
the Labrador Key, that’s some of the country that we both know. I think there’s in
periods of isolation, when you’re by yourself, you do feel that there is energy and a
presence that is much greater than self. You are just there. You watch and feel this and
you listen and you hear. You marvel at what’s there. And you absorb what’s there to
the best of you ability in the absence of the knowledge of all that goes on within the
lichen or the Lemming, but you are the furry Marmot, the Caribou. It’s enveloping. It
comes over you. You sit and absorb the marvel of it.
MR. KAYE: Is this the wildness of the wilderness that you refer to?
MR. BRANBORG: This is the wildness, yes. No patterns of conformity, no impacts of
human beings are present. The communities of animal and plants, the glacial and
geological forces, they are all there working in their timeless way. Any reflection brings
you to the realization that this is the evolutionary process of life and the landforms. You
are here as an observer. And you are here as a humble agent who gets to see this without
any interference on what is taking place.
MR. KAYE: It’s interesting that you mention the word evolution. Olaus Murie used
that work very often in his wilderness writings. The idea being, let me ask if I understand
Murie correctly from your understanding of him; that a part of the value of this place
would the evolutionary process would be free to continue here unhendering by people.
Was that a value of this place to you?
MR. BRANBORG: I think very definitely. Here is the stop where things are continuing.
The landforms are changing. The animals are changing. The plants are changing, and the
climate may change. It is an epitome of evolutionary process if we can keep our hands
off of it.
MR. KAYE: Does that contribute to the scientific value of the place? Was that a
concern of yours, or a value to this place?
MR. BRANBORG: Yes, I always identified the scientific value, but I recognized that
scientific exploration would pose a threat to wilderness if we got carried away with it.
The intrusion of science in a way that interfered with or inhibited natural evolutionary
process would itself be destructive to the wilderness and the wildness. That was
something that came to us as it is here today. We can’t tolerate intrusions on the
wilderness that are destructive in the name of science.
MR. KAYE: Olaus used the words spiritual value and intangible value quite a bit. Did
this place hold some intangible value for you? I think that some of the values we have
talked about are intangible, but…
MR. BRANBORG: I believe so. Interestingly, in references to spiritual values from
Zanhiser, Murie and the two that I knew the best; Harvey Broom, Sig Olson, Oberholser,
and I am not mentioning others that were rich in their philosophical base and their
spiritual base. I don’t read to remember their references to the deity, to God. But I think
in those people and in myself, there’s a rich spiritual feeling that comes. And some of the
best expressions of that were from Olaus in describing what had happened to him when
he walked around the block waiting for a bus. I think it was in Pennsylvania when he was
on his way to Washington. He met me for dinner with Mardy. He said that he came to a
place were the ‘beautiful leaves of fall had come together.” He looked into that montage,
and he saw that there were transcendent things, beyond us. I remember conversations
with Mardy where said that some of these things that flow together in our lives are by
some design. There is synchronicity. Things come together and are meant to be. Many
times in my life in the Salmon River Canyon and in the high basins of the Bob Marshall or
the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho, and I had my wilderness experience in these
areas on my Mountain Goat research that I was doing. I think you feel a spiritual
influence, and I don’t think I’d tie that to any specific higher power. But I felt that there
was a strong spiritual influence. I don’t know that I ever really discussed that with
Howard Zanhiser. We both had spiritual experiences in the Cathedrals of Washington. It
was our habit, when I drove with him to and from work, to stop by the Cathedral, or the
Catholic Shrine and stand in awe within these structures.
Finding ourselves, I guess, in the midst of the flurry to do all of these things for the
Wilderness Bill and the membership of the Wilderness Society and holding the operation
together. Certainly, there was a heavy feeling of spirituality within these rich characters.
Harvey Broom, Howard Zanhiser, Sig Olson, and of course Olaus and Mardy.
MR. KAYE: How about Bob Marshall? You were probably pretty young in his time,
but I know you met him as a child and your father knew him didn’t he?
MR. BRANBORG: Yeah. When Bob Marshall retired from the Forest Service his
brother George had run on to some old notes. Those old notes indicated that there were
five people in the Forest Service that Bob recommended for his replacement in the Office
of Recreation, as the Chief. One of them was my father.
MR. KAYE: Oh really?
MR. BRANBORG: I don’t know whether my dad had been with him on more than the
one occasion when I remember Bob coming to our home. He had hiked from the Salway
River over the Montana Divide, down into Boulder Creek on the west fork of the Bitter
Root in one day. That was a tremendous exertion of forty or fifty miles. His face was
sunburned, and he was at our dining room table when my mother served dinner. I
remember him, I suppose, that would have been in the 1930’s before his death. I think he
passed on in 1939. It would have been in the period of 1935
Stewart Brandborg, May 8, 2004, Majestic, Alaska, Wilderness Forum with an introduction by Jack Hession. Recorded by Roger Kaye
No full textOral history interview with Stewart Brandborg with an introduction by Jack Hession. Recorded by Roger Kaye.
Mr. Brandborg is speaking at a Wilderness Forum held in Alaska in 2004. He is mainly speaking about wilderness and getting a bill passed to designate wilderness areas.
Name: Stewart Brandborg
Keywords: History, Biography, Wilderness, Wildlife management, Wilderness Society, Sig Olson, Howard ZahniserSTEWART BRANDBORG, MAY 8, 2004
MAJESTIC MT, ALASKA
WILDERNESS FORUM W/ INTRO BY JACK HESSION
RECORDED BY ROGER KAYE
MR. HESSION: [Addressing a gathered audience] Well, we’re coming down to the end of
three days and two nights of very interesting and exciting discussions. I hope that this
will turn out to be an historic occasion in conservation history, as we launch into the third
big Alaska campaign for both the Wilderness, and the Alaska Lands Act. Personally, I am
very encouraged. It’s been a great gathering. I am honored to be able to introduce Stewart
M. Brandborg who I first met in September of 1971. There was a Wilderness Conference
there that the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and several other groups were involved
in. There was “Brandy” lobbying the assembled dignitaries of national leadership. His
message was, “The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is about to pass ladies and
gentlemen, and we’d better do something about it, or we’re going to be left behind.” This
is was my view about six or seven weeks before it was actually passed. Brandy
recognized the opportunity early on; for the previous couple of years at least. But in
1971, such was his understanding of the opportunity, that he turned his lobbying staff
loose to work exclusively on the passage of 17-D2D1 amendment to the Settlement Act.
Doug Scott, who was even younger that I was at the time; Ernie Dickerman and Harry
Krandle, and there were others. But there were four or five of us and Brandy was our
leader, and guru, if not patron saint at that stage of the game. He turned us loose and for
the next six weeks; day and night, we just spent all of out time on trying to get this thing
through. Ironically, we lost in the House but we prevailed in the Senate, because of the
enormous national support for Alaska. I hope that we can do this again, and to show you
how Brandy’s participation turned out; I was reading these two reprints of articles, and I
didn’t realize it but apparently in 1976, Brandy was shown the door because some of the
governors of the Wilderness Society thought that he had been spending too much time on
Alaska. That’s very, very interesting. But what that goes to show us is that while you
can take Brandy out of the Wilderness Society, you can’t take Alaska wilderness out of
Brandy! So he’s back! He’s inspiring us, and leading us once again. It’s my great honor
and privilege to introduce my friend Brandy. [Applause]
MR. BRANDBORG: Well, the fact is that you can’t quit. And once you have this
terrible addiction, it’s always with you. And I must say I am saturated with factual
information, which I am not sure I needed in such a complete form. But I got it, and to
me it’s an ominous picture. But if nothing else, my presence here with the kindness of
the Wilderness Society and Wilderness Watch, both organizations for whom I have caused
and brought great challenge. The Wilderness Watch, you can imagine how disorganized
they are, with my being the Treasurer! That gives you some measure. All of these years,
since 1976, yes Doctor; I have been watching the Wilderness Society recover from my
twenty years there. We have a nice, gentle, persuasive, effective leader in Bill Meadows
today. But the recovery is still in progress after four or five people who preceded Bill.
So I don’t claim any short-term impact on organizations.
I am reminded of my good mentor, the long-term President of the Society Sig
Olsen who always told the story of a lady, after one of these exciting sessions with a
reception Saturday night and it’s libations. She stood on a chair in the corner knocked on
the side of a glass and said, “Listen everybody, I’ve got an announcement that I want you
all to hear. I just want you to know that I feel a whole lot more like I do now, that when I
came in!” This takes me to the fact that my colleagues at Wilderness Watch, if I say
“#72” they chuckle and if I’m lucky I get 212 and they laugh. That comes from the fact
that this pattern of a good friend, whose brother was in prison. He went to visit his
brother. They walked along and somebody shouted, “91!” and there was great laughter,
“508” and more great laughter. The doors swung closed and guards followed them right in
to the inner sanctum, and finally somebody said, “12”, and finally he said, “What is all
that?” The answer was “these guys have been here so long that all of the jokes are
numbered!” “Well what’s wrong with number 12?!” Well, some guys can tell a story,
and some guys can’t. I almost lost that one! The thing I can testify to is that some
people, and you included, can last a hell of a long time doing these things and sitting
through these interminable meetings that are so productive and vital; and that the period
of the early wilderness Bill was as equally heavy and ominous. We started with Zanhizer
drafting this and I’d mentioned after Echo Park there had been this big drill to defeat the
proposal of the Bureau of Reclamation’s intrusion on the Park Service; a precedent that
was unequaled in the annals of the environmental movement. That, after three years was
won with the resounding vote in the House. Jack Kennedy stood on his crutches as the
fifth guy in line. The other Senators vanished. It wasn’t very popular to fight for the
environmentalists but we got thirty-two votes in the Senate and that laid the foundation.
Zanhizer wrote the Bill and we then faced the onslaught on opposition from the agencies;
the Forest Service, the Park Service who said they didn’t need it and it interfered with
their administrative prerogatives. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce and a grand array of
opponents that you all know; mining, gas, oil, lumber and all of these people. It was
interesting that the good people in the agencies exhibits here, some of them contributed to
the drafting. They had drafts and they greatly strengthened it. It was interesting that we
had Tribal lands in the first Bill. And all of the refuges and all of the parks and all of the
national forest wild and primitive areas were going to go in with the initial passage;
subject to resolutions to take them out later by Congressional action. This was a great
accomplishment. We were going to save all of the wilderness in one swell forward
advance. Of course, that didn’t happen. The fight of the ensuing eight years was of one,
of working of course, with groups like this. The first hearing in the Senate brought in
people from all over the country. What a wonderful representation right here! You
backgrounds, your interests, and people, who love birds, people that fished and hunted.
There were some cattlemen because they were resenting the intrusions on the ranges of
the country. There were also naturalists and scientists. From that hearing, this massive
document was built, “the bible”. At Senate hearings, there was a grand alliance with one
man who was on the Senate staff, Benton Staun who nurtured Zanhiser and me through
the years, and was a master tactician along with our friends in the Sierra Club; Charlie
Callison and the Wildlife Federation and others. The point in all of it was the strong
consolidation of opposition. The House Committee was loaded with people unfriendly
to wilderness, representing the commodity interests. We went, during those eight years
through eighteen hearings. Many of them were in the field in places like McCall, Idaho
and Montrose, Colorado where our opponents rallied everyone they could get. We were
forced to get out into the field and mobilize the folks like those here assembled. They
came forward and they did one tremendous job. That was the first real grassroots
mobilization experience of the Society. This was important because it showed me in no
uncertain terms, what our only recourse would be once the legislation was enacted. The
Sub-Committee Chairman of Public Lands, Gracie Post, said near the culmination of the
battle, that more mail had been received on the Wilderness Bill than any legislation in the
history of the Congress. From all of this, and the extensive mailings, and this of course
takes us now to the national campaign for Alaska, to get our national groups after this
foundation that’s been put in place here, reaches a level to have them go at it hammer and
tongs. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail went out initially. I think there were
about five hundred thousand; to all of the groups within the conservation camp. That
was the basic document, and statements saying that this was the law and this is what it
will mean, “Here are the provisions, and this is what the opponents are saying. We want
you to know that this is vital to the preservation of our wild estate.” Those went out and
the hearing that was ‘the bible’ also went out. It was an arrangement which I referred to
the other day that members of the Congress used their [sounds like “francs” a federal
mailing list], so the Wildlife Federation list, which we had available had three hundred and
fifty thousand people on it, and also the Sierra Club. That went out, and subsequently as
things developed and there were further refinements of the bill, they went out. I don’t
think we are doing that with the national groups like we need to. I don’t know that we
can ever avail ourselves of franc mail to that degree. There were several times when we
got into scrapes with they discovered what we were doing and we thought that all of the
hierarchy of the Senate and the House would come down on us with the IRS and of that.
But we escaped that. It was a dismal damned picture. It was just as dismal as some of
the elements of what we’re facing in Alaska. The environmentalists persevered. The
organizations just went after it, and people all over the country went after it. It was the
first time when we systematically lobbied every state with a lot of phone work and a lot
of mailings aimed at “Congressman Jones”, or “Mrs. Smith” in the Senate. It was point
specific. “Here is the issue, and here is the need.” You always had to talk a little
circuitously because of the IRS. ‘But here is what the environmentalists are saying and
here is where this poor Representative of yours is misleading all of us and getting us into
trouble’. There was real contact work with the key members of Congress and real follow-up
with the grassroots troops that had been mobilized.
At the culmination of the Bill, Wayne Aspenal, the long-time Chairman of the
Interior Committee had said that the Bill would never pass. We succeeded in getting
President Kennedy to call Wayne and say in so many words, ‘Wayne, I’ve got to have
that Bill, this is it!’ That hurtle was crossed, but Wayne had recourse. He made it very
clear that the areas wouldn’t be brought in, in one package. They would be brought in
through this laborious process that you all understand. There were the local studies, the
hearings and passage up through the bureaucratic ladders to the Secretaries of the Interior
and finally to the White House and finally to Congress with hearings on each side of
Capital Hill. That left me, as “Zany’s” successor, in the fall, after he had died in May,
with what I thought was an unsolvable predicament. What the hell was I going to do with
only nine millions acres of what we thought would be fifty, sixty or seventy million acres
in the Wilderness System; all of the rest having to come through hearings and local
involvement. Of course, my reaction was to go the people because I had known them.
There were people like these, with a great team of folks in the Society to community
groups. That gave us exposure to the Sierra Clubs, the Audubon teams, the Sportsmen’s
Clubs; putting them in working circles spending weekends with them like we have here, to
say, ‘How do we do it?’ You found of course great depth, great background, a lot of
scientific understanding, a lot of just good, old-fashioned moxey on how to put pressure
on their legislative delegations. They got out and they mapped, they documented the case
and brought the proposals in the Congress. Suddenly, there was a tidal wave of these
things and it was very hard to keep up with them. People like Ernie Dickerman, Rupert
Cutler, Doug Scott, George Alderson, and always the Sierra Club picking up and doing
their best, as well as Audubon and many others.
Now, relevance to today? In a lot of ways, as I listen to what we’ve come down
on in the way of a specific work plan, I think this is just tremendously significant; what
you’ve done here today, revitalizing this great coalition which brought us the national
interest lands. Having been through that fight when it was tough. Jack, in his generosity
mentioned some of the characters, but you all know without my saying it, that every time
I did anything it was because good people within my circle, and they were a wild bunch
of men and women, they demanded action. I was the guy who was stodgy and slow
moving but I felt enough heat so I’d… [Keep moving]. You know what Gandhi said,
“There go my people. I’m their leader. I must hurry!” They were wild and wooly and
they kept the heat on me. They’d come in and say, “We’ve got to go for this!” This
followed the Alaska Pipeline when it was showdown time at the OK Corral. By God, I
couldn’t get anybody to go with me to sue the Aliaska Company. We did know, and two
solicitors in Interior were talking to me. One of them became Vice President of the
Wilderness Society, Frank Berry. But they said, “You’ve got them! They’ve only got
thirty-two or thirty-six feet to the mineral leasing law on each side of this line!” Of
course they had submitted a thirty-two-page NEPA statement. Secretary Morton had
signed off on it. It was going like a house afire. And they said, “Go get ‘em dog, go
get’em!” But I couldn’t get anybody in the other outfits to sign on except for old Dave,
who had just been kicked out of the Sierra Club, but was a blood brother. He didn’t have
any money but he had a new organization. They signed on and eventually EDF
[Environmental Defense Fund] signed on. The long story was, and you’re always glad to
see this made shorter on my part, we prevailed. They did have to write an EIS that did
partial justice. Although we recognized then, as you do now, what would happen at
Valdez. We lost that in a Senate vote with a fifty-fifty break and the deposed Vice
President breaking the tie in favor of a NEPA override.
The culmination of D2, you remember more than I do. But it did take with the
same kind of torch treatment that I got from these people that worked with me. And
people like Jack; we did invest heavily in the Alaskan fight. That came back to haunt me.
Of course, you’d never look back because the Alaskan fight meant so much to each one of
us. The Society had a certain amount of turmoil, as most organizations do. Of course, I
pause to say watch out for turmoil in your organizations. The most important thing we
have is the human spirit and the good people. Slow up, take time with each other.
Understand each other. Bring folks in to close relationships and trust. It’s so easy in
organizations to get into squabbles with each other. We don’t spend enough time because
of the loads we have. The intensity of our work and the pressures we feel are great. And
there are always a few things happening out here with the families. These things make it
easy to not spend time in saying ‘how are we doing?’ Invariably in working closely with
someone else you do a few things that aren’t so good from that person’s standpoint. You
feel a few rough edges. You’ve got to have processes in organizations to meet those
differences and disappointments that you deliver to each other.
The next hour and a half….[All laugh] The people in this room, how many have
had any exposure to processes, any course, any bureaucratic training on how you put
yourselves together into teams, and hold yourselves and stop to say, ‘hey, are we doing
okay? Do we have the trust? Can we differ? Can we come out best pals after we do
differ?’ Those are technologies that most outfits that I’ve ever been with have never been
exposed to. In our grassroots work, we talked in the early years about the issues. We
had enough money; a couple million bucks, and we could deploy teams to do what the
Wilderness Society and Wilderness Watch have done here. I thank you so much for
making this possible. I thank all of you, and those of you who have worked so hard for
this. It’s a turning point in Alaska’s wilderness history. I don’t make light of it.
Anybody that’s watched this attrition and the strategies of our opponents, couldn’t feel
anything but the deepest concern. You’ve risen; you’ve risen to pick it up. You are our
hope for Alaska’s wilderness. That’s all there is to it! We saw that in addition to training
on the issues; who’s doing to do what? Getting the facts, reach the media; reach the
Congressional delegation, the decision makers. There was the dimension of what you do
with people. We finally slicked over with ecumenical groups; wilderness groups, labor,
environmental and the whole range. We had sessions where we devoted our time to
keeping our own energies up, taking care of each other and learning the processes of
staying together and keeping forward motion while keeping all of the tenants that we saw
practiced with Zanny and Sig Olsen and Harvey Brunam and Olaus and Mardy. Go
down the list! There were gentle people! Their generous treatment of any one of us,
immediately made you feel that you had been included in the circle that was drawn. You
were a part of them. I think our discovery, simply put, was that people need this. They
need reinforcement from good friends, close circles and they need to nurture each other.
Then of course, you have this big challenge in Alaska. How do we go in to these tough
communities like the one where I live and you live, and find good people? They are there.
We know they are there. We know that most things in this world, and within the
democratic system have been accomplished by a few people, so you bring those people in
to the circle. And you have one guiding principle, which is to nurture the man or woman.
Find out what she’s done, what she likes to do, what her capabilities are and where you
can fit her in to the forward motion of this campaign. Then you monitor to see that the
individual, which is the most important thing that we have, has a part of our grand
strategy and is a part of a team, any team, that changes the climate of the politics within
these communities. I am not saying for a minute that in my hometown of Darby, or
Ketchikan, you can bring a majority of people in behind us. But you can find those
individuals who will document the case, raise their voices, meet every opportunity to
bring enlightenment to folks who need to know what we are about. Well, the coalition as
we now see it seems to be on that road. We’ve reached a real culmination here. I don’t
see how more could have been accomplished, and how more could have been realized as a
networking mechanism. I also don’t see how we could have come together in a conclave
where we talk from the heart and measured the depth of our devotion to wilderness.
Wilderness is what we stand for. The spirit of the people and the quality of the people
that we enlist is what sustains us. You can say all you want, but it is a remarkable
constituency that we appeal to. It’s a remarkable group that will come in and spend this
time, and invest their lives in the cause to the degree that we see happening right now. I
think we have everything going for us. Norman Cousins said, “ You know, the one thing
the American people at a time of great frustration…” and he’s going to close in on me like
the old eagle. “The one thing that the people have need for is the realization, as they look
back on their lives, the realization that because I was here, the world is a better place.” I
think that’s what we’re talking about. And we are talking about the spirit that comes
from the people who we set fire, that we involve, who catch on and come back together
and say ‘Look what we’ve done! Look what we are a part of! It’s bigger that us!” It goes
to the transcending things that our master spoke of here last night. This is bigger that us.
It’s for the public good and we made it happen. Had we not been on the line, it wouldn’t
have occurred. Teddy Roosevelt said, oh, you know the line, ‘the noblest sport the world
affords is the great battle for the public cause.’ Well, you have signed on in your
magnificent way and great things will happen! [Applause
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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