Collection Highlights: New Additions to the Archives Website

The Smithsonian Institution Archives continually strives to add more collection information to its website. This is a periodic post highlighting new acquisitions and individual collection items. Staff have been very productive, despite being in extended telework mode.

Nine Hundred Thirty-one New Historical Images from Record Unit 95!

• Record Unit 95 is a collection of a wide range of photographic images that document the Smithsonian from its earliest years in the nineteenth century and up to the 1960s. The 931 new images largely capture the early history of the National Zoological Park. This is just the first batch of several from this collection that we hope to post in the near future.
• 254 of these assets are open access.

Six Hundred Ninety-Six Revised or New Finding Aids Online, including:

• Accession 19-102 - National Portrait Gallery, Department of Exhibitions and Collections, Exhibition Records Management, 1973-2017. This accession consists of records which document the work of the Department of Exhibitions and Collections Management, responsible for the preparation and development of exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery. It also includes records about the design, publicity, and incoming and outgoing loans involved with the exhibitions. 
• Accession 19-131 - Elizabeth C. Reed Papers, 1945-1959. This accession consists of scrapbooks created by Elizabeth C. Reed, wife of National Zoological Park (NZP) Director Theodore H. Reed. Mrs. Reed, who often traveled on official business with her husband and hand-reared baby animals from the Zoo in her home. She collected newspaper clippings and magazine articles, primarily about the Zoo and its staff and animals, as well as Zoo and Friends of the National Zoo newsletters.
• Accession 19-142 - United States National Museum, Division of Plants, 1899. This accession consists of forty original photographic plates, many of which were used in the article "Notes on useful plants of Mexico," by J. N. (Joseph Nelson) Rose.

Forty-seven Finding Aids with New Links to Digitized Material, including:

• Record Unit 74 - National Zoological Park, Records 1887-1966. This record unit contains primary source information documenting the early history of the Zoo. Digitized materials linked via this finding aid include images, correspondence, sketches, maps and other resources.
• Record Unit 7250 - Constantine Samuel Rafinesque Papers 1815-1834 and undated. This collection consists of notebooks that Rafinesque kept on his many trips.  They contain natural history notes and observations, ichthyological and botanical drawings, sketches of landscapes and places visited, itineraries, and trip journals. Some of the notebooks are in French.
• Record Unit 7393 - Louis L. Ray Papers, 1930, 1932, 1936-1939. This collection includes the field notes Ray recorded during his work with a Burea of American Ethnology excavation, 1936-1937. In these field notes, Ray documented studies to determine the geological antiquity of the Lindenmeier site. Also included are field notes Ray wrote during research trips in Missouri, 1932, and Colorado and New Mexico, 1938-1939, and notes from research on his master's thesis, 1930.

Related Resources

• "Open Access, Put a Bird On It," by Marguerite Roby, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• "Rolling Up Our Cardigans with Record Unit 95," by Emily Niekrasz and Marguerite Roby, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives