2003 Annual Reports for Boards and Committees

History Oversight Committee

The History Oversight Committee met with Wade Pickren on August 21, 2003 during the annual meeting of the APA. Members present were Nicole Barenbaum (Chair) and David Leary. Warren Street was unable to attend.

After the call to order by the Chair, Wade Pickren gave his staff liaison report of activities over the last year: There continued to be substantial growth in the Divisional archives. Many photographs were added to the collection, as well. The process of moving records management to Archives and Library Services was begun. Pickren reported that the NIMH book project was completed. The effort to continue to gather oral histories from psychologists in many subfields of psychology was continued, as was the Presidents Oral History Program.

II. HOC Discussion and Recommendations

The HOC suggested that historians of psychology should try to develop more joint activities with allied divisions, such as Division 1, 2, 4, 6, and 24, and find ways to liaison with other divisions over common issues. These activities might include convention displays, and mutually supportive advocacy. The HOC also suggested that the APA might explore ways of funding university faculty to do work of importance to the APA. Small grants are one form of support, and offering office space to faculty members on sabbatical is another possible means of promoting collaboration.

The major issue discussed by the HOC centered on proposed additions and revisions to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association to establish formats for references to archival and historical materials. The APA publishes books on the history of psychology (e.g., the Portraits of Pioneers series) and historical articles in journals that cite and list references in APA Style (e.g., History of Psychology, the American Psychologist, and the Journal of Applied Psychology). The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences also uses APA style, as do publishers of psychological works with a historical focus (e.g., the History volume in the Wiley Handbook of Psychology, published in 2003). Many of these works draw upon sources retrieved from archival collections and other repositories. As recoverable data, archival sources should be listed as references, according to the general guidelines in the APA Publication Manual. However, the current edition of the Manual includes no guidelines for references to unpublished historical materials. In the absence of such guidelines, authors have developed a number of different formats, and copyeditors who consult the Manual do not recognize sources that should be included as references (for example, they may consider letters from archival collections to be “personal communications,” the only format suggested for citations of letters). This item is submitted at this time in order to give time for recommended changes to be included in the next edition of the Publication Manual.

III. HOC Recommendation

The History Oversight Committee would like to recommend additions and revisions to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association to establish formats for references to archival and historical materials. The APA publishes books on the history of psychology (e.g., the Portraits of Pioneers series) and historical articles in journals that cite and list references in APA Style (e.g., History of Psychology, the American Psychologist, and the Journal of Applied Psychology). The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences also uses APA style, as do publishers of psychological works with a historical focus (e.g., the History volume in the Wiley Handbook of Psychology, published in 2003). Many of these works draw upon sources retrieved from archival collections and other repositories. As recoverable data, archival sources should be listed as references, according to the general guidelines in the APA Publication Manual. However, the current edition of the Manual includes no guidelines for references to unpublished historical materials. In the absence of such guidelines, authors have developed a number of different formats, and copyeditors who consult the Manual do not recognize sources that should be included as references (for example, they may consider letters from archival collections to be “personal communications,” the only format suggested for citations of letters).

The History Oversight Committee is currently developing a set of proposed additions and revisions to the Publication Manual in two general categories:

A. Formats for retrievable sources not currently covered in the Manual

These sources include unpublished and published materials in archival and other collections—e.g., correspondence, unpublished papers, newspaper clippings, out-of-print brochures, interview transcripts, apparatus and other physical objects. See Appendix for examples of different formats that have appeared in recent APA publications.

We would like to recommend a general format, based on APA Style for archival materials, including the following elements:

Author of the document, if known
Date it was created, if known
A title if it is available
A description of the material (letter, speech, minutes of a meeting, etc)
Name of the collection
As much information as needed to help locate the item with reasonable ease within the repository Name and location of the repository

For example, a reference to a letter from an archival collection would be listed as follows:

Boring, E. G. (1925, May 5). [Letter to Erving Betts]. E. G. Boring Papers, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, MA.

We have drafted a longer proposal including examples of formatting for references to other types of documents, for consideration by the Publications Board.

B. Guidelines for historically correct use of “biased” language

In order to convey an accurate sense of psychological work from earlier historical periods, authors may need to use terms that are considered unacceptable by current standards. For example, in a description of the work of psychologists who used the term “subjects” to convey their scientific expertise, substituting the term “research participants” would be historically inaccurate. Similarly, in a description of E. B. Titchener’s Society of Experimental Psychologists as “a select group of scientific men,” substituting a gender-neutral or gender-inclusive term for “men” would obscure Titchener’s intention to exclude women. A general instruction regarding acceptable use of biased language in historical work should help to prevent disagreements among authors, reviewers, editors, and copyeditors.