WHOI Contributions to the Scientific Literature

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Contributions to the Scientific Literature contain the scientific work published by the staff of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In 1932 Henry Bigelow, after discussion with Dr. Rossby and President Compton at MIT, wrote to the Members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of WHOI to propose a joint MIT/WHOI publication entitled "Meteorological and Oceanographic Papers". Their original thoughts had been for WHOI to establish a publication of its own, but after consideration this was found to be impractical and the fields within oceanography too varied. Instead, beginning in 1933, "contribution numbers" were assigned to publications, and the collection of contributions was started.

From early on, the scientific staff was strongly encouraged by the Directorate to adhere to certain procedures when dealing with their published work. These papers had to "contribute to the understanding of the marine environment and to the wise use of the oceans" and could only be authored by WHOI staff and students. They had to be channeled through the office of the appropriate department chair or the Associate Director for Research to ensure the paper was submitted to a "recognized journal that maintains an adequate review procedure" (Institution memorandum 5-75). As part of the process of routing the papers through the office of the appropriate department chair, WHOI "contribution numbers" were assigned.

There were practical reasons for these procedures. The administration wanted to check that the purchase requisition for page charges and reprints were filled out properly and that there were sufficient funds to cover subsequent bills. Publishers often had strict timeframes and deadlines, which necessitated "rushing" purchase orders through the system. An adequate number of reprints were needed to satisfy obligations to funding agencies and copyright permissions had to be procured for Collected Reprint copies.

Hundreds of copies of each reprint were purchased and bound into volumes, which were shipped out worldwide as an "economical, permanent way to distribute under one cover the reports of the Institution to a selected number of repository libraries throughout the world." (Institution memorandum 6-76). In the eighties, copyright issues, printing and mailing costs made domestic and foreign distribution impractical, consequently the 1980 set was the last to be mass produced and shipped out externally.

Until 1975, the Collected Reprints contained only those publications that had received a WHOI Contribution Number. In that year, the Provost requested that even WHOI-authored papers that had not received a contribution number be "reported…in order that a bibliography may be kept throughout the year for all publications from the Institution." The Collected Reprints became a compilation of all numbered and unnumbered contributions published within a given year.

Contribution number assignment became the responsibility of the Publications Office under the guidance of Mary Sears and later under Joan Hulburt. The Institution hired a Research Librarian, Carol Winn, in 1975 and the responsibilities of assigning and tracking the Contribution Numbers, and for gathering the reprints of numbered and unnumbered contributions became a function of the library. Four sets of the Collected Reprints were bound yearly, and were shelved in the office of the Director of Research, the MBLWHOI Library, the Clark Library Office and the Data Library and Archives.

To accompany and record The Collected Reprints, the MBLWHOI Library created the WHOI Contributions to the Scientific Literature database. The database contained records for over 17,000 citations and "in press" items. The records were hosted in an MS Access database. On a monthly basis, new and edited records were converted to MARC format and loaded into the Library's searchable online utility, making the database web accessible to users both within and outside the Institution. The contents of that database are recreated in this finding aid.