While teleworking, photograph archivist Heidi Stover has been able to complete the descriptions for the first half of a collection of "passport photos" from Accession 11-009.

Roam if You Want to....Roam Around the World

We will get a glimpse at how archivists continue to work on projects while at home.
May 13, 2021, by Heidi Stover

It has officially been 426 days since the Smithsonian Institution (including the Archives) first closed its doors. Many may be wondering….how does an archivist, especially one who deals directly with photographs or photographic negatives, continue to work from home for over a year? 

A small dog sits in front of a computer.

Well, my friends, I will give you a brief glimpse into some of the work I have been able to accomplish since that fateful day in March 2020.

Let me first start by saying we nearly all could telework here and there before the closure. There seemed to be an endless list of spreadsheets to standardize, things to research, legacy issues in metadata or descriptions, or just a backlog of “things” (we have a lot of those). There was always prep being done on materials, so we don’t need access to the “stuff” 24/7 to do our work. However, we had to do a total pivot to only have access to the “stuff” through our computers—no more popping into our storage to quickly check a box for something.

At first, this wasn’t a struggle. But after several months of looking at spreadsheets instead of handling photographic negatives the desire to “see” collections was huge. Most of the time, each image would be a new surprise or mystery; so we started to really focus on owning a whole project that allowed me to research and use digital materials. My project was to complete all the descriptions and research on a unique collection that was always just called “the passport photos.” The majority of these are just that. They are the small, passport photographic negatives taken by a Smithsonian photographer, mainly for Smithsonian employees. Think of these as a perk about working at the Smithsonian.  You didn’t have to search and travel to a passport photo place to feel awkward around a stranger taking your photo. You could just bop into the photo services space at the National Museum of American History to see your friendly neighborhood Smithsonian photographer. There are also portraits sprinkled within the passport photos, most likely used for various things, but, again, mainly of former (and even some present) Smithsonian employees.

Two boxes labeled passport files.

The original mindset in 2019 for this project was to do a fast inventory of the material in each of the 6 boxes. Then, we didn’t need to be working with the physical materials and could conduct research just with digital access to the negatives. After the in-depth research was complete, we planned to have this be one of the early rapid-capture projects at our off-site facility in Hyattsville, MD. With a bit of archival magic (actually, a lot because imaging and describing are just part of the process), these photos would then be searchable, online in some capacity, and used in different ways.

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Photographic services catalog record.

Envelope for Michael Collins' photograph from 1971. Courtesy of author.

Negative of a portrait of a man in a suit.

Negative of the portrait of Michael Collins from above envelope. Courtesy of author.

It felt good because it seemed like we got a tiny glimpse from the 2019 crystal ball of the future. We planned that this project would work with a mix of material time and just computer time. The main success we, by some chance, predicted in that crystal ball that made this project mildly successful in a COVID-19 world (with the help of conservator William Bennett and historian Pam Henson) was to digitize all the physical Smithsonian staff lists and directories strictly for internal use. We have these dating from 1920 to 1999 (missing a year here and there).

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Cover from the first official directory of the Smithsonian Institution from 1965.

Cover from the first official directory of the Smithsonian Institution from 1965. Courtesy of author.

Cover from the directory for the Smithsonian Institution from 1985.

Cover from the directory for the Smithsonian Institution from 1985. Courtesy of author.

By having the inventory of what was in each box, the digitized lists/directories, and plenty of computer time, I have been able to complete the descriptions for the first half of this collection.

There are still 3 boxes remaining that I hope to gain access to in the near future. But for the time being, this has been your glimpse of a project a photo archivist does when they can’t access to the physical collections. Just an FYI: we continue to answer reference questions remotely, give access to material that is already digitized, and hope to be back in the office for on-site research soon.

Spreadsheet of final descriptions made from original inventory.

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