G. Arthur Cooper typing and 

 Josephine Cooper picking out 

 fossils in his office on the 

 third floor of the main build- 

 ing's loest xving. The grind- 

 ing wheel ivas used for 

 sharpening needles to do pre- 

 cise preparation of fossils in 

 rock. To the right, below a 

 large tray, is a rock trimmer, 

 hand powered by tivisting the 

 horizontal wheel. July 1954. 



discontinued, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections would 

 further swell the total. 



In 1969 the Smithsonian instituted a series of Con- 

 tributions in various fields. Those in the realm of natural 

 history have amounted to about twelve feet in fifteen 

 years. None of these figures include publications in 

 other scientific series or journals. 



Staff Organizations 



A handful of staff organizations deserve brief com- 

 ment. The first is the Senate of Scientists, modeled on 

 a similar organization at the National Institutes of Health. 

 This group first met in 1963 in the basement of the 

 ethnologist Saul Reisenberg's house with Gordon Gib- 

 son, another ethnologist, as the first chairman. Those 

 who met felt almost like conspirators. One reason for 

 organizing was that a number of actions, such as changes 

 in parking regulations, were taking place without the 

 affected parties' having any say. It was evident that 

 Secretary Carmichael was soon going to retire, and it 

 seemed more prudent to begin an organization before 

 a new Secretary arrived than after."' 



The senate is the one place where those from asso- 

 ciated organizations can have a tiny voice concerning 

 the building they inhabit. As the departments have be- 

 come larger and the paperwork more complex, the 

 senate provides a way of f ocusing on the problems that 

 divert energy from the goal of research. The senate 

 once challenged the Institution on its endowment prac- 

 tices and persuaded the treasurer to modify some of 

 his policies. The dinner f orums organized by the senate 

 every other month or so are one of the few activities 

 that cut across organizational lines within the Smith- 

 sonian complex. 



The Smithsonian Museological Association, in spite 



of its name, has been confined to the Museum of Nat- 

 ural History. Technicians tend to be even more limited 

 to associations in a single department than do the 

 professional staff. Some of the ideas and concerns of 

 the technicians have been expressed, through this group, 

 and there has been exchange of techniques across de- 

 partments. The organization began in 1974 and is now 

 dormant. Both it and the senate in a sense are like 

 volunteer fire departments — organized but not active 

 until a crisis comes. 



A quite different organization is the Guild of Sci- 

 entific Illustrators. These people are not scientists, nor 

 are they technicians. They are artists in a highly spe- 

 cialized field. The illustrators in the Museum founded 

 the group, which is now an organization of more than 

 1,000 members, with shows at international scientific 

 meetings to its credit. The guild is one of the places 

 where art and science are not in conflict.'' 



In the 1960s a small group calling itself the POETS 

 Club met each Friday afternoon at Louie's Restaurant 

 on the northeast corner of Ninth Street and Pennsyl- 

 vania Avenue, NW. It was essentially the closest place 

 to the Museum where one could get a beer and a sand- 

 wich. Ernest Lachner and the late James Peters from 

 the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles could spend 

 hours enlightening visiting scientists on this and that. 

 During the days of the Summer Institute in Systematics, 

 several members of the National Academy of Sciences 

 were taken to Louie's. When Louie's closed in 1983, 

 the POETS transferred to the Museum. Those who are 

 newly into curating, the younger technicians, and the 

 current lowest of the low, the packers for the move to 

 the Museum Support Center, continue to gather for 

 mutual support. As they might phrase it, this is the flip 

 side of the Senate of Scientists dinners. □ 



The Scientific Staff 



\45 



