Administrative/Biographical Note
In the early 1960’s it became clear to many investigators, who thought of themselves
as immunologists, that they needed an international network that would both promote
interaction between immunologists and present their aspirations and needs to international
and national institutions. At the time national societies had long existed in the
United States and Great Britain, but such societies had just recently been founded
in Canada, Israel, Switzerland, France, and Australia and others were on the point
of formation. As the result of informal consultation among immunologists, the International
Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS), an umbrella organization for regional and
national societies of immunology throughout the world, was officially founded in Brugge
(Belgium) on May 5, 1969 by the representatives of ten Societies (American Association
of Immunologists, British Society for Immunology, Canadian Society for Immunology,
Dutch Society for Immunology, Gesellschaft fur Immunologie, Israel Immunological Society,
Polish Society of Immunology, Scandinavian Society for Immunology, Societe Francaise
d’immunologie, Yugoslav Immunological Society). The representatives of the Australian
Society for Immunology and the Swiss Society of Allergy and Immunology were unable
to attend but the societies expressed their support and were later accepted as founding
members.
At this first meeting of the Council, officers were elected, a committee structure
was established, and steps were taken to write a constitution. Additional Council
meetings were held on September 2, 1970 in Merlingen, Switzerland, on February 23,
1971 in London, England, and on July 30, 1971 in Washington D.C. The IUIS Constitution
prepared by the Council was formally approved by the 1st General Assembly of IUIS.
(The Constitution was revised and adopted by the General Assembly in 1995.) The objectives
articulated in the Constitution were: to organize international cooperation in immunology
and to promote communication between the various branches of immunology and allied
subjects; to encourage co-operation between independent Societies that represent the
interests of immunology; and to contribute to the advancement of immunology in all
its aspects.
The General Assembly also elected the first official slate of IUIS officers and a
new Council who would serve for the period 1971 – 1974, in accordance with the rules
of the IUIS Constitution. These rules stated that new officers and members were to
be elected at the triennial General Assembly. As a result of this election Bernard
Cinader became the first President, John Humphrey Vice – President, Alain de Weck
Secretary – General, and Peter Miescher Treasurer.
The first and most important decision of the new IUIS involved the creation of the
International Congress of Immunology. The need to create international congresses
that would allow immunologists of many different sub disciplines to present their
particular point of view to colleagues in other sub-disciplines had long been apparent
and it was unanimously decided that an International meeting, covering the many different
areas of contemporary immunology should be organized. The organizationof the first
International Congress of Immunology was entrusted to the American Association of
Immunologists, founded in 1913, the oldest national immunological society, and was
held on August 1-6,1971 in Washington DC. More than 3400 scientists representing 45
countries came to participate in fifteen symposia and eighty-four workshops encompassing
most aspects of modern immunology. The second International Congress was held in Brighton,
England on July 21 – 26, 1974 and was attended by approximately 4500 scientists who
participated in twenty-five Symposia and one hundred sixty-three Workshops. Subsequent
congresses have been held every three years under the auspices of IUIS.
The establishment of committees was a key factor in the initial development of IUIS.
In the first year Committees on Standardization, Nomenclature, Education and Symposia
were organized. Two of these, Standardization and Nomenclature were already operating
by the time of the First International Congress. Shortly thereafter, in 1973, the
Clinical Immunology Committee was formed. These five committees remained as the major
focus of IUIS activities until the early 1980’s. In 1980, the Veterinary Immunology
Committee was added, followed quickly by the establishment of the Publications Committee
in 1981.
An important objective for IUIS was to interact with international scientific organizations
such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Council of Scientific
Unions (ICSU). Immunology had become a separate section of WHO in 1963 and from its
beginnings IUIS maintained an intimate, cooperative relationship with all aspects
of WHO immunological activities. From the outset they participated in joint committees
in the areas of nomenclature and standardization. Then, in 1976, the IUIS was accepted
as a member of the International Council of Scientific Unions.
The Immunologist, the official journal of IUIS, published it’s first issue in 1993.
The journal publishes articles and reviews in basic and clinical immunology and provides
a forum for discussing issues of importance for the discipline of immunology.
In the year 2012 there were 65 member societies of IUIS, many of which belong to one
of four Regional Federations.
Scope & Content
Arrangement
Organized into five series: Series I. Officers and Council, 1966-2011. Series II.
Membership, 1971-2001. Series III. Meetings, 1970-2010. Series IV. Committees, 1967-2000.
Series V. Affiliated Societies, 1972-2000.
Series I. Officers and Council
- Correspondence
- Council Meetings
- Reports
- Miscellany
- Accounting
Series II. Membership
- Member Payments
- Member Societies and Regional Federations
- Directories
Series III. Meetings
Series IV. Committees
- Organization
- Clinical Immunology
- Commission for Europe
- Education
- Nomenclature
- Publication
- Standardization
- Symposia
- Veterinary Immunology
Series V. Affiliated Organizations
- European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS)
- International Training & Research Center (ITR)
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)
- Miscellaneous Organizations
Note
This collection of records of the International Union of Immunological Societies 1966
– 2011 documents the origins of the Union, its growth in membership and committees
and the developments in the International Congress of Immunology. These records have
been organized into five series: Officers and Council, Membership, Meetings, Committees,
and Affiliated Organizations.
The first series, Officers and Council, contains the correspondence and reports of
the president, vice-president, secretary-general and treasurer, the minutes, agendas,
reports, and correspondence of the meetings of council, the organization’s financial
records and some miscellaneous administrative files and photos. There is a complete
run of correspondence for the President from 1971, the date of the beginning of the
Union through 2001 and a nearly complete run of Treasurer’s correspondence. The correspondence
files for the Vice-President and Secretary-General are considerably more sporadic.
Of particular interest are some of the early correspondences dating as early as 1966
detailing the discussions leading up to the founding of IUIS, decisions pertaining
to the choice of name, issues relating to the proposed constitution and the organization
of the first IUIS Committees, Standardization and Nomenclature. Also of note is a
compact disc from 2004 containing the electronic files of the Secretary General Anne
Kelso, which includes files regarding archives, the assembly, committees, 2007 International
Congress planning, the IUIS council, database, email correspondence, federations,
finances, ICSU, IUIS central office, IUIS handbook, letters, materials for the website,
membership applications, and WHO documents ranging in dates from 1999 to 2004.
This series also contains the minutes of all the council meetings beginning with the
1970 meeting and continuing up to 2011. Agendas, reports, correspondence and other
materials connected with these meetings are, however, only available from 1979 - 1997.
A large selection of the meeting minutes are available through UMBC's Digital Collections.
There are a small number of President’s reports and very few reports of the Secretary-General
but there is a reasonably good run of Treasurer’s reports. There is one copy of the
1st International Congress budget for 1971 and another financial report for 1973 after
which there is a fairly good run of treasurer’s reports for the years 1980 – 1995.
The accounting records available in this collection are practically non-existent for
the first ten years of the organization. There is a pair of handwritten ledgers for
the year 1972 and then nothing until 1982. Records from 1982 forward include banking
and investment information, files pertaining to income and expenditures including
invoices, receipts, budgets, and audits, and files concerning the expenses of specific
committees.
The second series, Membership, comprises the bulk of the records that relate to dues,
subscription, member societies and regional federations. There are an extensive number
of invoices, receipts, and correspondences pertaining to member payments, as well
as correspondence files that provide information about the relationship of IUIS with
immunological societies and regional federations throughout the world. These together
with printed membership directories show the growth of the Union over time.
Series three, Meetings, primarily holds documents relating to the International Congresses
on Immunology but also include some records for the IUIS Conference on Clinical Immunology,
and the International Immunopathological Symposium. The files include the minutes
of the General Assembly, as well as agendas, reports and budgets, programs and correspondence.
There are also a significant number of files relating to the planning and arrangements
for the congresses. These include schedules, contracts, proposals, brochures, budgets,
ephemera correspondence, memos, and management agreements.
The files in the fourth series, Committees, are the records of the actions of eight
IUIS committees. Some of the committees have retained very few documents while others
such as the Clinical Immunology Committee, the Nomenclature Committee, the Standardization
Committee and the Symposia Committee have records spanning most of the time they have
been functioning. Of the IUIS committees the Veterinary Immunology Committee has maintained
most extensive record of their work. Committee files include some or all of the following:
correspondence, memos, minutes, agendas, proposals, budgets, reports, articles, programs,
and a questionnaire. Of some interest are the correspondences and reports of the Clinical
Immunology Committee that predate its organization. They provide a view into the concerns
that lead up to its formation.
The last series is Affiliate Organizations. These records pertain to organizations
that have some type of formal working relationship with IUIS. For most of the represented
organizations there is very little material present but the records do include some
correspondence, memos, reports, and a charter. On the other hand, there is quite a
substantial amount of documents for the International Council of Scientific Union
(ICSU). These files contain correspondence, audited accounts, dues and exchange rate
information, grants, reports, and newsletters.
Provenance Information
Provenance and Acquisition Information
This collection came to the archives in fourteen different accessions: MSS 95-02 donated
by Alain De Weck of the Inselspital Institut fur Immunlolgie umd Allergologie. Bern,
Switzerland on April 19, 1995. MSS 95-10 donated by Gustof Nossal of the Walter and
Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, The Royal Melbourne Hospital. Victoria,
Australia on July 17, 1995. MSS 95-14 donated by Richard G. Miller of University of
Toronto department of Medical Biophysics. Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 18,
1995. MSS 96-09 donated by Bernard Charley of the Virologie et Immunologie Moleculaires,
INRA. Jouy en Josas, France on April 2, 1996. MSS 96-10 donated by Michael Sela of
the Department of Immunology, Weizman Institute of Science, Israel on April 25, 1996.
MSS 99-01 donated by Bernard Charley of the Virologie et Immunologie Moleculaires,
INRA. Jouy en Josas, France on January 11, 1999 SARCV 99-05 donated by Keith James
of the Lester Research Labs., University Department of Surgery, Royal Infirmary. Edinburgh,
Scotland on May 20, 1999. SARCV 99-07 donated by Henry Metzger of NIAMS, NIH. Bethesda,
Maryland on August 20, 1999. SARCV 2000-06 donated by P. Nieuwenhuis of the Histology
dept. University of Groningen. Gironingen, Netherlands on May 30, 2000. SARCV 2004-06
donated by the International Union of Immunological Societies on September 28, 2004.
SARCV 2005-02 donated by the International Union of Immunological Societies on April
11, 2004. SARCV 2005-04 donated by the International Union of Immunological Societies
on June 1, 2005. SARCV 2011-02 donated by Gerlinde Jahn of the Vienna Medical Academy.
SARCV 2011-03 donated by Masayuki Miyasaka of Osaka University Graduate School of
Medicine.
Processing Note
This collection was processed under the supervision of Marcia Frank Peri and completed
in March 2001. Additional minutes were added to the collection in March 2011 by Graduate
Assistant Colleen Walter. Three additional accessions were processed and incorporated
into the existing collection by Elizabeth Pente, Special Collections intern, under
the supervision of Lindsey Loeper, Special Collections Archivist in the Spring of
2012.
This collection of the records of IUIS arrived over a period of sixteen years in fourteen
separate accessions each of which had been inventoried reboxed, and refoldered maintaining
its original order. At the time of processing it was determined that the best approach
would be to organize them together as a single collection. The arrangement of documents
was determined by the original order of the largest aggregate of materials, with adjustments
being made when similar materials, with slightly different arrangements, overlapped.
Therefore, for example, the correspondence from each accession was arranged together
in date order by year and then by sub-divided by officer; even though some of the
correspondence came in arranged by officer, because the bulk of the documents had
that as their original order. Similarly, with the financial and accounting documents,
the arrangement was based on the incoming order most commonly used.
In the Spring of 2010, the Council meeting minutes were scanned and made available
for online viewing through UMBC's Digital Collections (CONTENTdm). The minutes were
scanned for access only by Michael Dick, Circulation, and metadata creation was completed
by Sujata Sharma and Amelia Jennings, Special Collections student assistants, under
the supervision of Lindsey Loeper, Special Collections Archivist. In Summer 2011,
born digital minutes from 1998-2011 were sent to Special Collections and added to
the digital collection; metadata creation was completed by Molly Bradtke, Special
Collections student assistant, under the supervision of Lindsey Loeper, Special Collections
Archivist.
In the Spring of 2012, a backlog of three accessions received in 2004 and 2005 were
processed and incorporated into the existing collection by Elizabeth Pente, Special
Collections intern, under the supervision of Lindsey Loeper, Special Collections Archivist.
These accessions were inventoried, rehoused, and refoldered maintaining its original
order. Three bound volumes of free papers presented at the 12th International Congress
titled Immunology 2004 Genomic Issues, Immune System Activation and Allergy; Immunology
2004 Immunodeficiency, Infectious Diseases, Immunomodulation and Vaccines; and Immunology
2004 Autoimmunity, Genetic and Degenerative Disorders, Malignancies, and Transplantation
were removed for cataloging.
Multiple copies have been disposed whenever there were more than two copies of a given
document, as have old checks and checkbooks.
Related Materials: Records of the American Association of Immunologists, the American
Type Culture Collection, and the American Society for Cell Biology, the Society for
Developmental Biology, the American Society for Microbiology, American Society for
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.
Descriptive Rules Used
Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DACS)
Archives Processing Manual: Description (2015): The processing manual used in Special Collections for all descriptive platforms, including
PastPerfect.
