Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: Have you ever wondered how our staff preserves the oversize collections at the Smithsonian Institution Archives? Here is an intern’s perspective on preserving the personal collection of Alexander Dallas Bache.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_10193,size=175,left]Fifty years ago the Smithsonian embarked on a new venture to bring the culture on display in the museum to life with the first Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Then called the Festival of American Folklife, it set out to show that the crafts shown inside museums are also still alive and well across the country.
Description: Birds of a feather flock together, especially if they are a pair of patriotic turkeys who took up residency at the Smithsonian's National Zoo.
Description: You asked. We answered. And we had a whole lot of fun doing it. On October 13, 2021, Archives staff answered questions on Twitter and Instagram for #AskAnArchivist Day 2021.
Description: On December 19, 1977 the Trees of Christmas exhibition opened at the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). This was the first exhibition of the Office of Horticulture (now Smithsonian Gardens) and featured trees with handcrafted ornaments representing a variety of countries and cultural traditions.
Description: The Archives was recently gifted an 1860 letter from Spencer F. Baird, second Secretary of the Smithsonian, to George N. Lawrence, fellow naturalist. The donor requested that, along with a digital version, a transcription be provided, which I undertook alongside a simple treatment. The letter was in overall excellent condition: the thin paper exhibited only a pair of small
Description: Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been researching recently, and you’ll get into some
Description: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.