Michael J. Lansing and David Rich Lewis, David Wrobel, María E. Montoya, Flannery Burke, Deena J. González, Elliott West, Benjamin Johnson, Sterling Fluharty and Janet Fireman | Surveying the Western History Association | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.3

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Michael J. Lansing and David Rich Lewis, David Wrobel, María E. Montoya, Flannery Burke, Deena J. González, Elliott West, Benjamin Johnson, Sterling Fluharty and Janet Fireman | Surveying the Western History Association | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.3 | The History Cooperative

Surveying the Western History Association

In 2005 the WHA Membership Committee conducted a survey of its members. The following essays offer a variety of interpretations of the survey data. A statistical summary of that survey appears at the end of this forum. Complete survey data, including written comments, can be found on the WHA website under "Membership". See http://www.umsl.edu/%7Ewha/conf/2005/05_member_info.html. Please note that numbered references in parentheses in the following articles correspond to the written comments on this website.

Surveying the Western History Association

MICHAEL J. LANSING AND DAVID RICH LEWIS

Compelling ideas spring from diverse venues. Some come from august settings such as research centers, scholarly gatherings, or colloquiums of experts. Others emerge from casual conversation, informal chatter, or cold beer on a warm evening. As the sun set over the nearby Wellsville Mountains on a beautiful July night in 2003, a brainstorming session on the front stoop of David Rich Lewis's home—defiantly in the latter category—led to the survey and the thoughtful responses you find in this issue of the Western Historical Quarterly.

The notion of conducting a survey of the Western History Association's (WHA) membership emerged out of two distinct, but related, impulses. First, with major staff changes at the WHQ, we wanted to find out where the publication stood in relation to the membership's expectations for a scholarly journal. Second, as longtime WHA members, we spent years listening to stories murmured in conference corridors and hotel bars about the deep fissures in the organization. Too often cast as schisms involving "old" western historians vs. "new" western historians, young turks vs. senior colleagues, buffs vs. scholars, academic vs. public historians, men vs. women, or whites vs. people of color, the supposed divides seemed consistently poised to push the WHA (and by extension, the WHQ) over the brink. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about what was happening and why. Yet beyond the occasional conference flare-up or whispered anecdote, no one could point to any firm measure of the WHA's membership and orientation.

That evening in Logan, we realized that we needed to better understand what the WHA had become, as well as how it compared to what members believed it had become, in order to assess what the WHQ should be doing to remain relevant, both for members and for those in the wider historical profession. We needed data to confirm, deny, or transform the anecdotal. While the WHA regularly collected basic subscription information, it hadn't gathered the more detailed demographics that other organizations typically collect on membership forms. So, the scope of the survey that we envisioned kept expanding.

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