- “The Spruce Goose” (no, it’s not a handsome goose…). The Archives’ Courtney Esposito writes about the history of this WWII-era plane, which was made of wood “because of wartime restrictions on metal,” on the Smithsonian Collections blog.
- It seems like archivists are popping up in the fashion world all the time these days. A Levi Strauss archivist notes, “If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be treated like a movie star, just take some really old vintage Levi’s® jeans to Japan” [via Mitch Toda, SIA].
- Thanks for celebrating with us during October’s American Archives Month! Here’s a great wrap-up of some of the Smithsonian’s Archives Month activities.
- It’s a lament we hear often: the "dying art" of handwriting and cursive.
- The Tennessee State Library and Archives has teamed up with Ancestry.com to make their genealogical records more easily available to the public [FYI: researchers can also use the records to learn about notable Tennessee figures such as Scopes Monkey Trial lawyer William Jennings Bryan (as you know, the Archives has a thing for Scopes Trial history)].
- At the top of the list of the world’s most amazing databases: the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life—a massive database that tracks every living thing on Earth.
- Many of the world’s important events, as well as our own personal movies, are stored on aging video tapes. This feature talks about a robotic system invented by Jim Lindner for the Library of Congress and now used at the Smithsonian to quickly and cheaply preserve our global video heritage [via Jennifer Wright, SIA].
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